What is Preprocessor
Preprocessor in computing language stands for a program that processes the input data to produce output data. CSS Preprocessor, does the same thing as it processes the input of a block of script to readable CSS files.
At the moment of writing, there are various popular CSS Preprocessor available and most of them does same thing with varied extended functionalities. Two of the most popular CSS Preprocessor are LESS and SASS.
After doing some research I chose LESS for following reasons:
- Its relatively easy to use and install – unlike SASS no need to install ruby before hand
- I am a big fan of Twitter Bootstrap and it uses LESS to, so learning LESS will help me master bootstrap too
- Twitter also uses the same Framework LESS, so if Twitter can run on the LESS, then any website can
Why CSS Preprocessor
As being a web developer, CSS Preprocessor makes life easy in various ways. Mostly:
- It helps in writing maintainable and flexible code. The concept of Object Oriented CSS is the main motto.
- It also helps in writing readable and modular css
LESS Compilers
Compliers complies LESS files to readable CSS. There care various compilers avaialbale, but my personal favourite had been been Crunch. Its compiler as well as editor too.
Brief Introduction to LESS
The idea behind writing LESS is to modularity, flexibility and reusability. The main building blocks of LESS are:
- Variables
- Mixins
- Parametric Mixins
- Nested Rules
- Functions and Operations
Over the coming days I would be talking more about these building blocks. This had been a very brief intro to the latest CSS trend on how to write a better CSS codes. CSS over the bigger projects can be hectic and troublesome to maintain. But with the concept of OOCSS(object oriented CSS) and tools and technologies like LESS and Crunch, one can write CSS that are easy to manage and maintain.
