4 ms·

Serious question - am I the only one who has looked at SASS and all its whizbang features, and decided that plain old CSS is just fine?

mgkimsal 15y ago
no, you're not the only one.
mattwdelong 15y ago
I agree. Though, I would love if someone responded and convinced me otherwise. What am I missing?
- shuzchen 15y ago
  If you've ever had to go back to your CSS and redo the colors (client wanted red instead of blue) then you'll find yourself thinking "I wish I could just store these redundant values in one place". At that point you'll start looking at css preprocessors. A simple find/replace doesn't always cut it (I want these things red, keep these other things blue), especially if your design also has derivative values (used in gradients, shadows). Personally, while I do try to take advantage of all the features of LESS, I think the biggest thing is the ability to define macros (utilizing mixins or functions). Never again do I need to write multiple rules for one style (-moz-foo, -webkit-foo, and foo) or need to remember the complicated argument order (defining gradients is vastly different between all of them). The cost is in introducing a compile step, but the benefit is that your stylesheet becomes easy to write, easy to read, easy to modify.
  - damoncali 14y ago
    Just curious - is there a reason CSS can't incorporate variables/macros and basic math without having to resort to a preprocessor? When CSS 5 or whatever is released, will all of this just be known as CSS?
- arocks 15y ago
  I think SASS is great for reusing pages or styles within or across projects. If a website has color-coded areas, say like The Guardian[1], then using color variables as the OP mentioned would make it extremely trivial to reuse. The math behind layouts can also be set using variables reducing a lot of headaches while the client wants 'the left column could be a bit wider'. I agree that it requires a lot more coding discipline than plain 'ol CSS. So much to the extent that one would be tempted to abandon it. But like all good layers of abstractions, it reduces a lot of effort in the future. [1]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/
ryanflorence 15y ago
I hate to pull the "you must work on trivial projects" card, but really, this article points out one very solid reason to use a CSS pre-processor. If you've never felt the pain of managing the colors, with gradients and everything else, I'm not convinced you've worked on a decent-sized project--that or you love project search/replace. Try out the SCSS syntax (or LESS), might warm you up to it a bit more.
- damoncali 15y ago
  Trivial projets? Perhaps. How many layouts does one need before a project becomes decent-sized? In the several years I've been doing web development professionally, I've changed the colors on a site exactly zero times - it just never comes up. I have wished for variables in CSS from time to time to make things more readable, but really not enough to care about SASS. In the end I find that if I organize my CSS well, changing things like colors really isn't such a big deal. Like you say. Find/Replace. Oh well. Either it will pass as a fad or I will one day be forced into the light.
  - karlshea 15y ago
    As nice as the colors are, the value I find in CSS preprocessors is the nested rule syntax and being able to use math and variables. I strongly advocate giving the SCSS version a try. It's straight-up CSS with all the things that should have been there in the first place.
  - shuzchen 15y ago
    Perhaps it's the type of design projects that are undertaken and the work style of the designer. In the situations where a designer provided .psds for me to transform into html/css, no I haven't had to modify anything. But then, the iteration on the design happens with the other guy, and he does it in photoshop. If a change happens, he just sends me the new asset images, and I just replace them in the repo. The times where I'm the one doing the design work, I end up switching things up a lot. This is because I don't do my design work in photoshop, but rather in the browser with actual html/css. So even while I'm iterating on something by myself (before having even shown the client anything), I'll switch colors up constantly trying to get something I'm okay with.

mgkimsal 15y ago

no, you're not the only one.

mattwdelong 15y ago

I agree. Though, I would love if someone responded and convinced me otherwise. What am I missing?

shuzchen 15y ago
If you've ever had to go back to your CSS and redo the colors (client wanted red instead of blue) then you'll find yourself thinking "I wish I could just store these redundant values in one place". At that point you'll start looking at css preprocessors. A simple find/replace doesn't always cut it (I want these things red, keep these other things blue), especially if your design also has derivative values (used in gradients, shadows). Personally, while I do try to take advantage of all the features of LESS, I think the biggest thing is the ability to define macros (utilizing mixins or functions). Never again do I need to write multiple rules for one style (-moz-foo, -webkit-foo, and foo) or need to remember the complicated argument order (defining gradients is vastly different between all of them). The cost is in introducing a compile step, but the benefit is that your stylesheet becomes easy to write, easy to read, easy to modify.
- damoncali 14y ago
  Just curious - is there a reason CSS can't incorporate variables/macros and basic math without having to resort to a preprocessor? When CSS 5 or whatever is released, will all of this just be known as CSS?
arocks 15y ago
I think SASS is great for reusing pages or styles within or across projects. If a website has color-coded areas, say like The Guardian[1], then using color variables as the OP mentioned would make it extremely trivial to reuse. The math behind layouts can also be set using variables reducing a lot of headaches while the client wants 'the left column could be a bit wider'. I agree that it requires a lot more coding discipline than plain 'ol CSS. So much to the extent that one would be tempted to abandon it. But like all good layers of abstractions, it reduces a lot of effort in the future. [1]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/

ryanflorence 15y ago

I hate to pull the "you must work on trivial projects" card, but really, this article points out one very solid reason to use a CSS pre-processor. If you've never felt the pain of managing the colors, with gradients and everything else, I'm not convinced you've worked on a decent-sized project--that or you love project search/replace. Try out the SCSS syntax (or LESS), might warm you up to it a bit more.

damoncali 15y ago
Trivial projets? Perhaps. How many layouts does one need before a project becomes decent-sized? In the several years I've been doing web development professionally, I've changed the colors on a site exactly zero times - it just never comes up. I have wished for variables in CSS from time to time to make things more readable, but really not enough to care about SASS. In the end I find that if I organize my CSS well, changing things like colors really isn't such a big deal. Like you say. Find/Replace. Oh well. Either it will pass as a fad or I will one day be forced into the light.
- karlshea 15y ago
  As nice as the colors are, the value I find in CSS preprocessors is the nested rule syntax and being able to use math and variables. I strongly advocate giving the SCSS version a try. It's straight-up CSS with all the things that should have been there in the first place.
- shuzchen 15y ago
  Perhaps it's the type of design projects that are undertaken and the work style of the designer. In the situations where a designer provided .psds for me to transform into html/css, no I haven't had to modify anything. But then, the iteration on the design happens with the other guy, and he does it in photoshop. If a change happens, he just sends me the new asset images, and I just replace them in the repo. The times where I'm the one doing the design work, I end up switching things up a lot. This is because I don't do my design work in photoshop, but rather in the browser with actual html/css. So even while I'm iterating on something by myself (before having even shown the client anything), I'll switch colors up constantly trying to get something I'm okay with.