Therefore, it’s really easy to pick up the syntax if you already know CSS, even if LESS has a few extra elements that you won’t find in CSS, such as the sign for variables.Two of the most important principles of web development are to avoid repetition and aim for reusability. LESS uses the standard CSS syntax with the. less files and the LESS converter to the section of our HTML page. However, we can also compile LESS on the fly by adding.
#Css procssor install
As it’s written in JavaScript, we need Node.js to install and run the LESS compiler. The LESS CSS preprocessor is, in fact, a JavaScript library that extends the default functionalities of CSS. Interestingly, later LESS also influenced Sass, as the newer SCSS syntax was inspired by the syntax of LESS. It was influenced by Sass, therefore it implements many of its features such as mixins, variables, and nesting. LESS was initially released three years after Sass, in 2009 by Alexis Sellier. There are several notable companies who use Sass in their production sites, for instance Airbnb, Kickstarter, Hubspot, Zapier, Freshbooks, and many others. Moreover, Sass has powerful mixin libraries and authoring frameworks that further enhance the functionality of the language, such as Compass and Bourbon. The two most widely-used frontend frameworks, Bootstrap and Zurb Foundation are both written in Sass, which gives an extra traction to the language. Sass has an incredible ecosystem with an active developer community and many tools and libraries. And, in case that wouldn’t be enough, we can define our own custom Sass functions as well. The Sass preprocessor also has built-in functions we can use to convert and mix colors, manipulate strings, perform mathematical calculations, and apply other dynamic functionalities to our design. Partials can be added to any other Sass file with the rule.
#Css procssor code
Sass supports modularity as well by letting us use partial Sass files that contain smaller code blocks we want to use many times, for instance a _reset.scss stylesheet.
With that many options, we can implement quite complicated logic within our CSS. Sass has a built-in if() function and an directive with which we can test different conditions and a an and a loop with which we can repeatedly output specific sets of styles. Loops and conditionals are probably the most loved part of Sass, as they allow us to write CSS rules just like in any scripting language. The code simply declares two variables, $primary-color and $primary-bg and applies them to the body HTML element. It uses the standard CSS syntax with braces and semicolons.īelow, you can see a basic example of the Sass/SCSS syntax. The newer and more widely used syntax belonging to the. sass file extension uses the older syntax that is indentation-based and omits semicolons and curly brackets from the code. LibSass is a C/C++ library that allows us to parse Sass in other backend languages, for instance in Node, PHP, and even C. However, the introduction of the LibSass library gave a huge boost to the utilization of Sass. Sass is written in Ruby, and originally it also needed Ruby to compile the code, which deterred many developers from using it. Sass allows frontend developers to use variables, if/else statements, for/while/each loops, inheritance, and other computational logic in their CSS code. So, they came up with a CSS preprocessor and named it Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets. Their goal was to implement a similar dynamic functionality in CSS as well. Its creators, Natalie Weizenbaum and Hampton Catlin were inspired by the Haml templating language which adds dynamic features to HTML. Sass is the oldest CSS preprocessor, initially released in 2006. Each of them has some advanced features unique to them and their own ecosystem (tools, frameworks, libraries) as well. CSS preprocessors all do similar things but in a different way and with their own syntaxes. Currently, the three most popular and stable CSS preprocessors are Sass, LESS, and Stylus, however there are many smaller ones as well.
CSS preprocessors make it easy to automate repetitive tasks, reduce the number of errors and code bloat, create reusable code snippets, and ensure backward compatibility.Įach CSS preprocessor has its own syntax that they compile into regular CSS so that browsers can render it on the client side. They enable us to use logic in our CSS code, such as variables, nesting, inheritance, mixins, functions, and mathematical operations. ( 2608 words)ĬSS preprocessors are scripting languages that extend the default capabilities of CSS. Popular CSS Preprocessors With Examples: Sass, Less & Stylus By Anna Monus | Posted | 13 min.
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