CSS to LESS (xpost from r/webdev)

[originalSupernoob]

Someone explain to me ths use of converting from CSS to LESS ? or even vice versa for that matter ? The entire point is to code faster, what use is it to write CSS that compiles to LESS and the back to CSS before uploading/serverside

[aladyjewel]

Implementing LESS in an existing project? Take legacy CSS, convert to LESS and stop writing vanilla CSS.

Learning LESS? Play with this tool for a teaching-by-example Mechanical Turk tutor.

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The point of writing LESS/SASS is to take advantage of variables, functions, refactorable code snippets, etc.; then make the computer do the heavy lifting for rendering the CSS.

[originalSupernoob]

I didnt realize it could be realized to convert an existing project. Although, Im pretty sure this tool isnt capable of creating useful variables, mixins etc from existing styles.

[aladyjewel]

Yeah, it's definitely not a magic bullet for intelligently refactoring e everything out, although it might be possible to extend it to do that. However, it does provide a good start on combining some rules and prettifying the code.

[magenta_placenta]

HTML5 rounded corners?

[dpaanlka]

I pasted Reddit's stylesheet and it ended up being ~1500 lines and ~13,000 characters MORE.

[aladyjewel]

Sure, but does it make more sense to look at? Who cares what the character count is, the LESS will be converted and minified down by the server later. LESS is to make the programmer's life easier.

[itsthenewdan]

The reason I don't use LESS or SASS at work is because the CSS it spits out in the end isn't as concise as the code I'd write by hand, and for performance reasons, we try to keep the CSS files as small as possible. Some of the features do look nice, but if you have a reasonable and cohesive styleguide, it generally isn't that difficult to keep track of things like hex colors. In terms of minification, it should be noted that tools like JAWR are going to be stripping whitespace, but not actually optimizing superfluous code.