3 ms·

There is genuinely a tiny benefit because you don't need to declare colors etc more than once, everything else about it is trying to wedge ideas from other area

by weego 16y ago

There is genuinely a tiny benefit because you don't need to declare colors etc more than once, everything else about it is trying to wedge ideas from other areas of programming into a language that contains so many abstract concepts as to not benefit from it at all. I've worked as a UI developer for 12 years now and I wouldn't go near something like this because there is no value. At least the server side version you can pre-process and package up for live after your developers have saved literally minutes by using it. You need to know CSS inside out, so you have to then unlearn and relearn different parts just to do something you can already do with find + replace. And worse, you are even including and downloading files that the browser cannot even interpret itself without relying on another download of JavaScript as well, so you're giving something that works 100% of the time (assuming someone has CSS on) another point of failure. Most of my time in UI has been in public sector education trying to push standards and quality from various suppliers to the Govt and seeing things like this from said suppliers (I've seen worse to be fair, but I've seen something like this before) is always an unpleasant experience.

edanm 16y ago
Let me give an example use case, something I've wanted. Lots of developers will tell you that it's fine to use systems like the 960 Grid System for rapid prototyping, but you shouldn't use them for final, "production" sites. Their argument is that "littering" your code with classes like "grid_4", etc. is not semantic (and they're right). So here's what I would love to do: use a system like 960 in development, but instead of using names like "grid_4", use actual, semantic names. But behind the scenes, I'll use less to "inherit" the grid_4 properties into the semantic name. E.g., assuming I have: "<div class="grid_4 article_header>", I'll remove grid_4, but use less to make "article_header" inherit grid_4's properties. That way my html remains semantic, but I get the full power of systems like 960.gs.
- isleyaardvark 16y ago
  I'll give another example with mixins: clearfix. I've seen webpages littered with class="clearfix" all over the HTML. That doesn't do anybody any good. With a CSS preprocessor you can define a clearfix mixin and just write it something like: .class-name .clearfix font-size: 1.2em There are other ways to do it like one long string of selectors followed by the clearfix code, but they're not as convenient or readable.
- mhd 16y ago
  Isn't that basically what compass does? http://compass-style.org/ http://compass-style.org/

by weego 16y ago

edanm 16y ago

Let me give an example use case, something I've wanted. Lots of developers will tell you that it's fine to use systems like the 960 Grid System for rapid prototyping, but you shouldn't use them for final, "production" sites. Their argument is that "littering" your code with classes like "grid_4", etc. is not semantic (and they're right). So here's what I would love to do: use a system like 960 in development, but instead of using names like "grid_4", use actual, semantic names. But behind the scenes, I'll use less to "inherit" the grid_4 properties into the semantic name. E.g., assuming I have: "<div class="grid_4 article_header>", I'll remove grid_4, but use less to make "article_header" inherit grid_4's properties. That way my html remains semantic, but I get the full power of systems like 960.gs.

isleyaardvark 16y ago
I'll give another example with mixins: clearfix. I've seen webpages littered with class="clearfix" all over the HTML. That doesn't do anybody any good. With a CSS preprocessor you can define a clearfix mixin and just write it something like: .class-name .clearfix font-size: 1.2em There are other ways to do it like one long string of selectors followed by the clearfix code, but they're not as convenient or readable.
mhd 16y ago
Isn't that basically what compass does? http://compass-style.org/ http://compass-style.org/