Less, a leaner CSS

Re:Less, a leaner CSS by jmtulloss on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @06:06PM (#660990)

For those of us not using Ruby frameworks, that's a definite plus. It's nice to have a simple standalone tool that does this.

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Re:Less, a leaner CSS by jeroen on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @06:27PM (#661015)

Except that I doubt that anyone not using Ruby is going to install Ruby just to run this. It looks very promising, but without a standalone compiler it is useless to me.

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Re:Less, a leaner CSS by carbon8 on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @06:39PM (#661025)

"Except that I doubt that anyone not using Ruby is going to install Ruby just to run this"

I don't see why not. Most developers depend on tools written in a variety of languages.

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Re:Less, a leaner CSS by jmtulloss on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @08:44PM (#661184)

Agreed. I barely know Ruby, but I have Ruby installed cause so many quality tools are written in it.

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Re:Less, a leaner CSS by carbon8 on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @06:31PM (#661020)

You can use Compass/Sass with non-ruby projects. I do.

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Re:Less, a leaner CSS by jmtulloss on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @08:43PM (#661182)

I know, but they're not that simple, so the integration helps a lot. Less seems pretty straightforward to use as a standalone tool.

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Re:Less, a leaner CSS by carbon8 on Wednesday June 17, 2009 @12:21AM (#661370)

Less looks great for a variety of use cases. Sass is also very simple and usable outside of ruby projects, Compass more so in any situation involving CSS frameworks. The sass and less commands basically do the same thing at their core:

  sass -h
  Usage: sass [options] [INPUT] [OUTPUT]

  lessc -h
  usage: lessc source [destination] [--watch]

Less is definitely more lightweight and simpler in some ways (the absence of the .sass-cache), but not in ways that have anything specific to do with web framework integration. Likewise, Compass is not tied to a web framework at all. In fact, its default behavior is clearly agnostic (just images/, src/ and stylesheets/ directories and a config file).

Less fills a good, important niche by being very close to CSS while adding the core features that most people long for when working with it, and I will certainly use it in some situations. But Sass and Compass are both perfectly usable in non-ruby projects. Currently I'd argue Compass is more portable than Sass, both because of certain features (its --watch option that it shares with less, but, afaik, sass itself doesn't have) and its primary function, which is making CSS frameworks much simpler and more powerful.

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