I am planning on dividing up my LESS CSS into multiple files to modularize my CSS and make it easier to manage and maintain. Ultimately I will be using #import to import all of my modular CSS files into one file that will get enqueued in WordPress.
Is #import a bad idea for performance?
Yes, using multiple imports will incurr equivalent number of file requests the browser has to make.
As long as you compile the LESS source into a CSS file and include that CSS file as the stylesheet for your site, performance will not be an issue.
For example when you make a Wordpress theme you can make a folder for your CSS and then compile it using for example simpLESS (if you are on Windows)
Sample template directory structure:
-themes/
-your-theme/
-less/
-main.less
-import.less
-etc.
-style.css <- this is the target file you would compile into
-index.php
-etc.
You can setup the target file to compile into easily. Also, simpLESS will keep the first top comment in the resulting file so that you can put your theme information in it.
Related
In Wordpress, my main style.css file imports various sub-files, such as content.css, archive.css, product.css and so on:
#import url("content.css");
#import url("archive.css");
#import url("product.css");
Without success have I have been looking for a way - through browser console or online resource - to download "in a shot" a single CSS containing style.css plus all related #import files, without having to copy and paste all of them in a new file.
Do you know if there is a solution for this? Thank you.
You could use a CSS pre-processor such as LESS or Sass (SCSS), they come with many other features as well.
Depending on the editor you already use you might be able so simply install a package (like Easy LESS for Visual Studio Code), rename your style.css to style.less and be done.
Choosing and switching to a CSS pre-processor might however, depending on your circumstances, environment and experience, not be easy or straightforward at all.
I'd suggest just to copy paste them your css files into one. Using a tool for a simple task as this one can only result in bugs.
Forgive me if this is naive, but I am used to using just CSS. Sass seems pretty cool and I'm down to learn it, but for some reason many of the Javascript or jQuery plugins I'm downloading have both a CSS and SCSS file associated with the stylesheet. I don't want to have to be editing two files to get results on the page, why would both be there when they seem like copies except for a few key areas? See image below, seems like there is an extra CSS file per SCSS. Is that because some browsers cannot compile the SCSS?
CSS and SCSS in same directory
Is that because some browsers cannot compile the SCSS?
Yes. There is a command line utility which converts the .scss to .css. Probably the .map file is a reverse-conversion aid for browser inspectors that understand it.
Whenever I have generated files (like a .min.js, or in your case .css that came from a .scss), I make sure the appropriate command-line conversion tool is executed automatically as part of my build script.
I'm not sure what kind of build system you are using, but there is some command line tool for conversion that will need to be executed.
You are not expected to manually update both formats. SCSS to CSS command-line converters existed long before any browser (is there one yet?) started to support SCSS.
No browser (at least major) is able to directly use SASS (or LESS). You always need to compile scss files to css, before you could use them.
You can compile css by build tools like grunt or gulp. You can even configure it to watch updates in scss files and recompile css if anything was changed.
You could have following types of files after build:
style.scss <- this is source file
style.css <- this is css file created from SASS file
style.min.css <- this is css file minified
style.css.map <- this is source map of scss file
Here you can read why css files are minified. Here you can read what are source maps for.
please excuse my inexperience with, and lack of understanding of, Sass.
Basically I was assigned to do some edits on a site which has a main css page and a few scss subpages, all organized through an ftp directory.
I'm just confused how the index knows where to pull the scss pages in the ftp directory? I've looked through the code for the index page, as well as the linked css and js pages, and can't find any part that references the scss pages. Yet they still load within the original css? Am I missing something?
Thanks for the clarification.
SCSS is a preprocessor language. That means it will be converted to CSS. The SCSS files do not get loaded by the website. Instead you will have to make your changes to the SCSS files and then convert them to CSS. It is likely that there is a system in place which takes care of that for you. Take a look around and find out whether there is a gulpfile or a gruntfile hanging out somewhere.
The main.scss file gets compiled to the main.css file. The output produced by the sass compiler replaces the main.css file. There is no link. You need to compile your main.scss file using sass.
Apart from that, you use 'CSS file' rather than 'CSS page' as CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheet which is definitely not page in itself.
Web browsers don't know what a SCSS or SASS file is. They only load CSS.
Your site could have a build tool (grunt, gulp, rake etc) to compile your .scss source files into .css files, which is then published to your web site.
Sometimes your application server will know how to do the translation on the fly and you can just edit the .scss file.
A lot of the time many .scss files will be combined into one .css file so you are often editing a different file to what you would expect when you look at what .css is loaded the browser.
I'm wondering if its okay to import all of bootstrap.less into my own .less file and then overriding anything I wish to change within that one file. My own .less file, style.less, outputs everything into a single style sheet, and I'm NOT including the compiled bootstrap.css file, only the JS files.
bootstrap // folder with all bootstrap less files.
style.less // imports bootstrap folder, and outputs style.css in root directory
Are there any drawbacks to doing it like this, or should I also be including the compiled bootstrap.css file?
Yes, do, you immediately gain access to all the mix-ins and variables. I'd say this is the most powerful way to use bootstrap.
As you're suggesting just import bootstrap.less at the head of your less file. I import any other mixin libraries, like lesshat, after that.
The problem is that you end up with one monolithic CSS file which is a nightmare to debug, but less.js 1.50 introduces source maps which is invaluable when using this methodology: http://robdodson.me/blog/2012/12/28/debug-less-with-chrome-developer-tools/
A faff to set up but saves a lot of head scratching.
This question already has answers here:
Import regular CSS file in SCSS file?
(15 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
I can use Sass to compile multiple .SCSS or .SASS input files into a single .CSS output file using #import as described here.
If I use #import to include normal .CSS files, they are not merged. The output .CSS file still contains the #import directives. That makes sense.
But is there a way I can override this behavior, perhaps a command-line switch to the Sass compiler? In other words, can I tell Sass to attempt to forcibly merge #import "foo.css"; just as if it were a .SCSS file?
I'm using a third-party library (Google Closure Library) with many .CSS files. I'm only using a few of these in my project. I'd rather avoid manual solutions such as renaming all these files as .SCSS (although this seems to work) or copying and pasting their contents into my .SCSS file (also works). And I don't want to serve them all to be imported on the client-side. I'd really just like Sass to include the few .CSS files that I use 'as is' and produce a single output stylesheet. Possible? Are there any other tools I should look at?
every CSS file is a valid SCSS too.. so if you change the files you need "invisibly" imported or merged to _filename.scss then #import from the main scss file using #import "filename"; (extension optional) it should compile to one big CSS with no #import statements inside it
edited to add: sorry just saw your edit after a browser crash.. and see it's not what you're looking for, I don't know of another way
I haven't found a way to do this in Sass.
My workaround is to import third part libraries directly from their URLs. Of course this only works for CSS libraries that are served via URLs. It's still importing multiple files but at least I don't have to rename files and otherwise manage a modified copy of the vendor's CSS library.
Example:
// ORIGINAL: locally managed, modified copy (bad), no #import in output (good)
#import 'my_modified_copy/closure/goog/css/common.scss';
// WORKAROUND: vendor-managed (good): #import in output (bad but acceptable)
#import 'http://closure-library.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/closure/goog/css/tab.css';
Before release, I'll probably add a script to pull a current version from the vendor and rename all .css files as .scss files. But for now, the above workaround is acceptable for development.
This can be done server-side and save you a bit of hassle if that's an option. Since you're just merging the files together and since it's just CSS there shouldn't be any conflicts in the information that should harm your site. Also, this way gives you flexibility to make updates to the CSS as frameworks are improved.
Ruby is not my language of choice but still very viable to do everything needed here. There is a tool out there written in Ruby that will do this for you with CSS as well as JS files. Take a look at this blog post to get the rundown:
http://cjohansen.no/en/ruby/juicer_a_css_and_javascript_packaging_tool
I hope that this is helpful, and please let me know if you need anything else on this one.