Review: Xyle Scope - Mac Browser, Source Code Viewer, CSS Viewer, Web Multi-Tool
I just picked up a copy of Cultured Code’s Xyle Scope application. It absolutely rocks and is a must have application for any Mac website designer. Any web site designers on other platforms should switch to a Mac just for this application. A quote on their website sums up what is so beautiful about this app:
The greatest challenge for software design is to bridge the gap between technology and the people who use it. But there is no universally applicable solution. For every project one has to find the balance anew.
Cultured Code met that challenge with Xyle Scope. As I surf the web and come across pages I feel have a very unique and compelling design I often ask myself how did they do that? Most sites don’t explain it in the content of the page like in the previous link. 
Normally I would click ‘View Source Code’ in whatever browser I was using at the time and stumble through trying to find out what elements make up the unique properties I’m interested in. Often tracking something back involves downloading external CSS files and spending lots of time breaking everything down to reverse engineer the website.
Xylce Scope does this all for you in one window. In one pane is your web browser while in another pane is the corresponding HTML, XHTML, and or CSS code. Simply click on a section of the website you want to investigate and it will show you the corresponding code. It will also break down the hierarchy of the entire page and external sytlesheets to show where in the hierarchy the code you are inspecting resides.
No more digging for hours to find the elusive trick you can learn from another developer. Let’s say I found a site that renders text in a really cool way. I click on the text and instantly I am shown the corresponding CSS that formats the text… even if it is buried in an external stylesheet! But it gets even cooler…
Now let’s say I want to change just the color of that text but leave all of the other fancy formatting options. I can do it in Xyle Scope and the changes are visible instantly in another pane without even reloading the page… And this is all while viewing someone else’s website without needing to manually download any of their code.
As a final bonus, Xyle Scope was able to show me a syntax error in one of my stylesheets that other validators missed. Wow. Well worth the $14.95 fee.
Tim Flight
Always learning from other Website Developers