SimpLESS compiless .less into beautiful .css
wearekiss.com
wearekiss.com
Btw ups for decent cross-platform-ness. Most of the tools in this space are either *nix-only or Windows-only.
Btw: "haha" and "omg" are very rarely good comment material. Neither does the "first comment that pops into ones head".
SimpLESS is the perfect name, as the program works brilliantly in the background. I'd highly recommend it for both Mac and PC users.
Like mentioned above, these apps are programming tools. It's not like he's mass marketing these to uninformed consumers.
Whether it makes you sad or not is irrelevant. What matters is what the users think, and if Reddit's reaction to it is any indication some will think it's funny and some will think the author is a bit of a dick.
I'm willing to bet that those who don't like it aren't Mac users.
Yes, let's please make development less fun, more "corporate" and gray. Humor and professionalism do not match.
Humor is "the quality of being funny", and professionalism is all about "doing your job well". It's obvious that a funny FAQ messes with their ability to code a useful app.
There's nothing from with a bit of personality, but it's a tricky road when you're dealing with Apple products. There's a fine line between coming across as fun and a bit of a dick.
SimpLESS is highly recommended, as it lets you focus on the code rather than figuring out the compilation bit. Auto-minification is a big plus too.
P.S. It's nice to see a good and usable Titanium application. :)
But until then I have my own solution which is that I have a keyboard shortcut that runs a bash script to compile the .less, focus on/open chrome and reload the page (all in one step!). I use the awesome software (windows and mac) quickkeys to do it.
I think it might be super useful to get frontend designers who are afraid of the command line to use LESS even more.
This Less file works great when using run time compilation.
Regarding making compilation part of your deployment, you expose yourself to differences between the development and production code which might prove difficult to trace down the line. Keeping your development code as close to your production deployment seems smart to me.
i'm curious what use cases have you run into where the less.js produced different css then lessc?
My point was much more general though. A tool like this seems great to help catch problems early - earlier than your deployment step. Can you be absolutely sure that there aren't any latent bugs in Less or differences between lessc and less.js, such that you could never have any differences between your less.js-backed dev code and your lessc-backed deployed code? Even if the codepaths are identical between lessc and less.js, their execution environments aren't.
All I'm saying is that if you're going to use some _thing_ in your deployment scenarios, it would make sense to use the exact same thing throughout your development (where possible). The biggest argument against this in the case of Less is the hassle of compiling it. That's where a tool like SimpLESS or less.app steps up.
TypeError: Result of expression 'e.dataTransfer' [undefined] is not an object.
Any suggestions?
Someone suggested using the Windows installer in Wine. I haven't tried that. I'll just go back to lessc.
sass --watch does the "compile on save" thing.
I also find that just due to the nature of the nesting, I'm writing much tidier CSS as a result.
I mean...variables? Do you never have the same width in two places? That is so simple and so huge. Want to make your shade of green 5% darker? Don't look up a new hexadecimal, just say darken(green,5%).
Make a button "class" where the only input is a color, and it automatically generates a cross-browser rounded-corner button with a slight gradient to 10% darker color, 20% darker border, with 20% lighter inset box shadow.
Really. You will not go back.
don't think it touches vendor prefixes.
I also force myself to add hover states to all the links, even if the client didn't specify it in the designs. Being able to use something like:
@link_color: #ffcc66; @link_hover: darken(@link_color, 15%);
is a HUGE perk.
SimpLESS is better though.
Thoughts?
Less compiles to css. It is faster to build great things than with just css. It is easier to maintain. There is almost no reason NOT to us it instead of straight css. There may be other better tools but if you have to build a lot of css, less is a great tool.
Whether that really justifies that many preprocessors is a good question, though (Instead of m4 or sth. like that). I'm not too fond of the plethora of cutesy DSLs we've got nowadays. Reminds me of Lisp macro overuse. (Never mind the general problem that all this need for HTML/JS/CSS hackery and abstraction layers probably showas that we need a better solution altogether. As Cato the Elder said: I miss PostScript.)