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

The box-shadow mixin


With all that you have learned about Less, you now can understand, build, and evaluate any complex Less code. To prove this, please open less/mixins.less and take a look at the box-shadow mixin (originally published on lesscss.org), which looks like the following code:

.box-shadow(@style, @c) when (iscolor(@c)) {
  -webkit-box-shadow: @style @c;
  -moz-box-shadow:    @style @c;
  box-shadow:         @style @c;
}
.box-shadow(@style, @alpha: 50%) when (isnumber(@alpha)) {
  .box-shadow(@style, rgba(0, 0, 0, @alpha));
}

To fully understand these mixins, you will have to know the basics of box-shadow in CSS3. The box-shadow properties accept a CSV list of shadows. A shadow consists of a list of two to four length values and a color. The first two length values describe the vertical and horizontal offsets related to the center of the box. These values are required but can be set to 0 to get an equal-size shadow around the box. The final values are optional and set the blur...