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Fronteers talk Digiti — "Pre-processing"
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houbenkristof
June 22, 2012
Technology
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Fronteers talk Digiti — "Pre-processing"
SASS, COMPASS & LESS
houbenkristof
June 22, 2012
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Transcript
Pre-processing INCEPTION ALL OVER AGAIN!
RIP ARJAN EISING He’s not really dead :)
Hi, I’m Kristof @houbenkristof —
[email protected]
Front-end/design at Mobile Vikings
I’m always up for a Challenge
Run a small firm CALLED TREESHADOW MEDIA
Creative Brewski TOGETHER WITH @TOMCLAUS & @DENNISJANSSEN
LEt’s TALK CSS
"You don’t need a new stylesheet syntax, CSS is simple
and you’re a moron if you can’t do it."
C’est très simple
Not that easy to maintain
Stylesheets evolve
Simplicity creates complexity
Keep things DRY DON’T REPEAT YOURSELF
we should Reference to existing information
"CSS is the weakest link in the web developers toolbox.
The problem goes deeper than CSS’s lack of variables. Unlike the “function” in programming, CSS has no fundamental building block."
It’s all about Abstractions
CSS PRIMITIVES HAVE NO MEANING
That’s our job!
Abstractions ARE GROUPS OF PRIMITIVES
Abstractions are not abstract to us
We give BUILDING BLOCKs meaning SO IT MAKES IT EASIER
FOR US TO UNDERSTAND
Our DESIGNS CHANGE
A kitten dies every time that happens
Find & replace OH PLEASE, DON’T GET ME STARTED!
Client: “We want #000 to be #333 but not the
user information underneath my #bada55 body text, oh while you're at it could you position absolute that element and rotate it a gazillion degrees, … oh, #333 doesn't look that great after all… Change it back!”
You’re screwed
What do we NEED?
The interior decorator!
Decorates with parts
He does not make those parts LAMPS, TABLES, CHAIRS…
PArts for PArts
Oh my god YOU REUSED A BUTTON!
When elements are common REUSE tHEM!
Focus! ON WHAT IS IMPORTANT, YOU MUST!
Hard to upgrade Customized third party stylesheets
Clearly we are in need of some Pre-processing
"In computer science, a preprocessor is a program that processes
its input data to produce output that is used as input to another program.” — Wikipedia
Syntactic CUSTOMIZED SYNTAX, EXTEND THE LANGUAGE, ADD IMPROVEMENTS
ex. SASS & LESS
Keeping things maintainable
SASS BY HAMPTON CATLIN & NATHAN WEIZENBAUM
Written in Ruby
Don’t worry, there are also GUI’s
Watches folders & compiles on save
2007 ORIGINAL SASS SYNTAX
None
Hard to convert existing CSS TO SASS
2010 SASS 3 INTRODUCES SCSS
None
Regular CSS = VALID SCSS
BUT WAIT there’s also COMPASS
It’s chock full of the web’s best reusable patterns.
None
None
Also contains other cool features IMAGE SPRITING, COLOR FUNCTIONS
None
None
You say LESS
It’s all javascript ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN RUBY BY ALEXIS SELLIER
Regular CSS = VALID LESS
LESS INSPIRED SCSS
VS LESS SASS Thanks to Chris Eppstein - https://gist.github.com/674726
Learning curve YOU HAVE TO KNOW JACK SH*T ABOUT THE
CLI
CODEKIT IS HOT!
CSS3 Helpers SASS HAS COMPASS, LESS DOES NOT
Variables
None
Mixins
Extending
Custom units in SASS MAKING THE LANGUAGE MORE FUTUREPROOF
Looping
DEMO
Thank you!
Resources: http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/09/09/an-introduction-to-less-and- comparison-to-sass/ http://sonspring.com/journal/sass-for-designers http://css-tricks.com/sass-vs-less/ http://chriseppstein.github.com/blog/2009/09/20/why-stylesheet-abstraction- matters/
Questions?