10. Building a Custom Processor | Mastering PostCSS for Web Design

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Table Of Contents

Mastering PostCSS for Web Design

By : Alex Libby

Mastering PostCSS for Web Design

By: Alex Libby

Overview of this book

PostCSS is a tool that has quickly emerged as the future of existing preprocessors such as SASS and Less, mainly because of its power, speed, and ease of use. This comprehensive guide offers in-depth guidance on incorporating cutting-edge styles into your web page and at the same time maintaining the performance and maintainability of your code. The book will show how you can take advantage of PostCSS to simplify the entire process of stylesheet authoring. It covers various techniques to add dynamic and modern styling features to your web pages. As the book progresses, you will learn how to make CSS code more maintainable by taking advantage of the modular architecture of PostCSS. By the end of this book, you would have mastered the art of adding modern CSS effects to web pages by authoring high performing, maintainable stylesheets.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

1. Introducing PostCSS

1. Introducing PostCSS

Discovering the art of processing

Introducing PostCSS

Setting up a development environment

Creating a simple example using PostCSS

Linting code using plugins

Exploring how PostCSS works

Summary

2. Creating Variables and Mixins

2. Creating Variables and Mixins

Introducing variables and mixins

Creating a hover effect example

Transitioning to using PostCSS

Adding variable support to PostCSS

Updating our hover effect demo

Setting the order of plugins

Creating mixins with PostCSS

Looping content with PostCSS

Summary

3. Nesting Rules

3. Nesting Rules

Introducing nesting

Navigating through pages

Transitioning to using PostCSS plugins

Exploring the pitfalls of nesting

Making the switch to BEM

Exploring our changes in more detail

Summary

4. Building Media Queries

4. Building Media Queries

Revisiting media queries

Exploring custom media queries in PostCSS

Making images responsive

Adding responsive text support

Optimizing media queries

Retrofitting support for older browsers

Moving away from responsive design

Taking things further with CSS4

Summary

5. Managing Colors, Images, and Fonts

5. Managing Colors, Images, and Fonts

Adding color, fonts, and media to sites

Managing fonts with PostCSS

Creating image sprites

Working with SVG in PostCSS

Adding support for WebP images

Manipulating colors and color palettes

Creating color functions with PostCSS

Summary

6. Creating Grids

6. Creating Grids

Introducing grid design

Creating an example with Bourbon Neat

Exploring the grid plugins in PostCSS

Transitioning to using PostCSS-Neat

Creating a site using Neat and PostCSS

Adding responsive capabilities

Summary

7. Animating Elements

7. Animating Elements

Revisiting basic animations

Moving away from jQuery

Making use of pre-built libraries

Switching to using SASS

Making the switch to PostCSS

Exploring plugin options within PostCSS

Updating code to use PostCSS

Creating a demo in PostCSS

Optimizing our animations

Using our own animation plugin

Summary

8. Creating PostCSS Plugins

8. Creating PostCSS Plugins

Extending PostCSS with plugins

Dissecting the architecture of a standard plugin

Creating an transition plugin

Building a custom font plugin

Simplifying the development process

Guidelines for plugin building

Making the plugin available for use

Summary

9. Working with Shortcuts, Fallbacks, and Packs

9. Working with Shortcuts, Fallbacks, and Packs

Using shortcut plugins in PostCSS

Exploring plugin packs for PostCSS

Adding shortcuts with Rucksack

Linting and optimizing your code

Providing fallback support

Summary

10. Building a Custom Processor

10. Building a Custom Processor

Creating your processor

Exploring our processor

Dissecting issues with our processor

Optimizing the output

Adding reload capabilities

Extending our processor further

Testing the final pre-processor

Getting started with some hints and tips

Introducing the CSStyle library

Summary

11. Manipulating Custom Syntaxes

11. Manipulating Custom Syntaxes

Introducing custom syntaxes

Preparing our environment

Implementing custom syntax plugins

Parsing CSS

Formatting the output with the API

Highlighting our syntax code

Summary

12. Mixing Preprocessors

12. Mixing Preprocessors

Taking the first steps

Exploring the conversion process

Introducing the Pleeease library

Compiling with other preprocessors

Using the PreCSS library

Converting a WordPress installation

Setting up our environment

Considering the conversion process

Making changes to our code

Compiling and testing the changes

Summary

13. Troubleshooting PostCSS Issues

13. Troubleshooting PostCSS Issues

Fixing some common issues

Exploring some common issues

Getting help from others

Summary

14. Preparing for the Future

14. Preparing for the Future

Supporting CSS4 styles today

Converting CSS4 styles for use

Supporting future syntax with cssnext

Creating plugins to provide extra CSS4 support

Summary

Index

Index

Adding reload capabilities

Adding a reload capability reduces the amount of time spent manually reloading our pages after a code change; the latter can be a real pain, especially when working with complex CSS styles!

The downside to this is that it only works in Chrome—if this isn't an issue, then these are the steps you would need to follow to make this work:

We'll start by extracting copies of the gulpfile.js and package.json files from the T53 – adding livereload capabilities folder, from the code download that accompanies this book. Save both copies to the root of our project area.
From the same T53 – adding livereload capabilities folder, extract and save a copy of the style.css file from the src folder within, to the src folder at the root of our project area.
Fire up a Node.js command prompt, then change the working folder to our project area.
In the prompt, enter npm install gulp-livereload –save-dev and press Enter—let this install.
Download and install the Chrome applet for LiveReload...

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