Book Image

LESS WEB DEVELOPMENT ESSENTIALS

By : Bass Jobsen
Book Image

LESS WEB DEVELOPMENT ESSENTIALS

By: Bass Jobsen

Overview of this book

Less is a CSS preprocessor that essentially improves the functionality of simple CSS with the addition of several features. The book begins by teaching you how Less facilitates the process of web development. You will quickly then move on to actually creating your first layout using Less and compiling your very first Less code. Next, you will learn about variables and mixins and how they will help in building robust CSS code. In addition, you'll learn how to keep your code clean and test it by using style guides. We will then move on to the concept of Bootstrapping and the strength of using Less with Twitter Bootstrap. Going one step further, you will be able to customize Twitter's Bootstrap 3 using Less. Finally, you will learn how to integrate Less into your WordPress themes and explore other web apps that use Less. By leveraging this powerful CSS preprocessor, you will be able to consistently produce amazing web applications while making CSS code development an enjoyable experience.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Less Web Development Essentials
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Alternative compilers for compiling your Less code


With the growing popularity of Less, the Less compiler has been ported to other languages as well. These ports can be used to compile Less with native language calls. Please keep in mind that these ports will usually lag the official JavaScript implementation, so you may find they are missing recent Less features. You may also realize, as mentioned earlier in Chapter 3, Nested Rules, Operations, and Built-in Functions, that these compilers are not able to compile native JavaScript expressions within backticks.

The Less.php compiler

This PHP port of the official Less processor can be download at http://lessphp.gpeasy.com/. You have seen an example of its usage already; the WP Less to CSS plugin has been built with it. Less.php also implements caching for faster compiling.

Although Less.php offers the possibility of creating CSS dynamically, you still should precompile your CSS for production in most cases. WordPress is also written in PHP, so...