Been a while since my last blog which disappoints me a lot, didn’t want to leave it too long as I fear just like the gym, once you stop, you stop for an extended period of time. So this is just a quick post to extend my appreciation for Less.

I’m very late to the party here, CSS pre-processors have been around for a while now. I hadn’t looked at them for a few reasons:

• I didn’t want to learn a new syntax
• I was worried about source control
• I was worried I would become dependent on it
• The compile step may slow me down
• I don’t actually do a great deal of new projects, I do a lot of maintenance

I’m sure people who haven’t used css pre-processors probably would consider the above to be a pretty standard list, I’ve heard others like you can’t work remotely on a file that then needs compiling etc. Lets be honest though none of the above have that much weight really. Probably the biggest reason was that I was being lazy.

So when I got my last small project which was a 2 day max start to finish brochure site I decided to bit the bullet and go for it. I had a choice between SASS and Less to make, I don’t know if there is a religious war between these two but I chose Less for no other reason than I have used Twitter Bootstrap in the past. A big project like this which uses Less seems like a pretty good advocate of the system. It also gave me a ready made reference guide with real world examples.

I solved the compile issue by purchasing LiveReload which not only compiles Less/Sass on the fly it also refreshes your browser without needing to switch to it. I am not feeling the full benefit of this part yet as I mostly work from my laptop in a single screen scenario, which is less than ideal. But a quick tab back and forth is still quicker than a tab, Cmd-R. I thoroughly recommend this app.

As to learning the new sysntax, it took me roughly 5 minutes to get used to it. Mixin’s – a breeze, the nested structure – intuitive, variables – a god send. In short I can’t believe I hadn’t used it earlier it was amazing. I also downloaded Less Elements which was a handy starter library for common mixins, a great way to get used to them.

I still have concerns over source control, because in a multi-person team someone could edit the css file direct and then the less file is out of date. This is a communication/discipline issue however and should be addressable.

Did I grow to depend on it, well not yet, but I could see it happening easily. Even now when I am doing a maintenance task I find myself wishing I could use Less on it. Just like when I don’t have my favourite MVC framework available I have to slow down and think about things and wish I had a convenient wrapper library about some basic functionality. If anything not using it all the time means that when I use it again I will probably have to re-learn it, which doesn’t worry me in the slightest.

If you’re not using a CSS pre-processor I seriously recommend giving it a shot.