Is there a CSS minifier than can resolve import statements? - css

Is there a CSS minifier tool that can resolve #import statements?
I'd like to be able to load multiple CSS files on my local machine but have them all resolved into one file when the website gets pushed out into production.

I recently started using LESS, beyond imports allows you to use:
Variables
Mixins
Parametric Mixins
Nested rules
Operations
Color functions
Namespaces
Scope
Comments
Escaping
So far I'm glad with my experience using LESS.
It's easy to use and the page is documented with good examples.

You can use SASS, with the SCSS syntax. SASS is much more than a minifier: it is actually a CSS preprocessor which adds some goodies like variables or macros to the CSS syntax. But you can choose to simply ignore these features (although I advise you to have a look): any valid CSS file is actually valid SCSS.
SASS can then compile your SCSS in valid CSS, and it can manage multiple files and output a single minified .css file.
You can try it just as a minification tool for now, and start using the advanced features when you feel like experimenting.

css-compressor (based on yuicompressor) inlines #import statements - in fact that is its primary purpose:
https://github.com/samilyak/css-compressor

Granule library supports #import in CSS.
You can look it here http://code.google.com/p/granule/

Related

Convert multiple CSS files to SASS / SCSS

I am creating a website using Drupal 8 and I found a free theme online which I have installed on my site. The theme consists of multiple folders of CSS files. I would like to use SASS to extend and modify this theme. If I want to do this, is it as simple as renaming all the files to SCSS files and compile using Gulp or Compass? Or is there a better practice to follow? Any guidance would be appreciated. Thanks!
There's no need to make any kind of conversion.
You can just change the file extension if you need to.
The SCSS syntax uses the file extension .scss. With a few small
exceptions, it’s a superset of CSS, which means essentially all valid
CSS is valid SCSS as well. Because of its similarity to CSS, it’s the
easiest syntax to get used to and the most popular.
From https://sass-lang.com/documentation/syntax

SCSS: how to actually include the contents of a #include?

I'm moving from Grunt to Gulp and noticed that gulp-sass does not include the contents of files referenced by #import "reset.css" statements. Instead, it normalizes the url reference, as #import url(reset.css). My intention is to have a single CSS reference on my index.html, that would be the concatenation of my CSS dependencies.
It's a simple read-file-and-output-contents operation, but I bet this is already implemented and I just don't know where to find it -- I'm still new on this ecosystem and would not like to spend time reinventing the wheel.
EDIT: the selected answer for this related question uses gulp-minify-css, instead of gulp-sass. Exchanging them could be a short-term solution, but I'd prefer to avoid my new build system to rely on unstable plugins. Moreover, I actually have plans to use scss, so I'd be back to having to deal with gulp-sass again. Thanks for the suggestion, though.
#import should actually include the contents of the file, not make a reference to it. Sounds like maybe the transpiling of the SCSS to CSS isn't working properly.

Do I need to edit scss or css to style my wordpress website?

I am using a wordpress theme and it has both style.css and style.scss. I want to make changes in the styling and I was wondering which file I need to edit? Both, style.css or style.scss?
Thanks in advance.
Information Sass
CSS on its own can be fun, but stylesheets are getting larger, more
complex, and harder to maintain. This is where a preprocessor can
help. Sass lets you use features that don't exist in CSS yet like
variables, nesting, mixins, inheritance and other nifty goodies that
make writing CSS fun again.
Once you start tinkering with Sass, it will take your preprocessed
Sass file and save it out as a normal CSS file that you can use in
your web site.
Answer
You need to edit the style.scss and then generate the style.css.
Once you started using sass oder less you'll never go back to css or regret it!
Learn how to Sass here.
An here is Software to generate the scss/less File.

Using Less with Web Components

As stated by Rob Dodson, style tags are now unavoidable with Web Components. I am trying to find a way to use LESS with this new tecnhology without having to paste the compiled CSS in my HTML document everytime I change something in the LESS file . Is there anyway to achieve that?
I am using Polymer.
Thanks!
Laurent
You can make the client compile the LESS to CSS , you should definitely take a look at this :
http://lesscss.org/#client-side-usage
It is advised to compile it yourself to css in a production environment though !
Doing this client-side hardly seems like the corrent solution, especially at scale. For instance, do you really want 1000 web components in your app all including LessCSS and compiling on the client side?
Just compile server-side and include the compiled version in your html import. Apps like DocPad, make this a lot easier. For instance:
src/documents/components/my-component/my-component.css.less is your source file, and is compiled to out/components/my-component/my-component.css, which is accessible at /compoennt/my-component/my-component.css.
We use this workflow to also make use of javascript pre-processors like coffeescript, as well as post-processors like css auto prefixer, and bundlers like Browserify. See: https://stackoverflow.com/a/23050527/130638 for more info.
Simply compile your less and embed the generated CSS file via good old link tag.
I don't think that rob wanted to say that using style tags is the only way to go. You can still link to external stylesheets as you always did.
Why don´t you compile on server side using php compiler? Have a look here - http://leafo.net/lessphp/ -
To let you know, i´m using this compiler on my projects, on the server side without any kind of problems!!!!!!! :) IMO, it´s better to have the compilation work on the server side. I´m not totally 100% sure, but i think IE8 don´t recognize text/less
The way I have done this before is have individual .less or .scss file for each component and have it compile into the individual .css file which is then called into the respective component file. and finally vulcanize everything into a single file.
Incase you want to use a single CSS file, then use //deep// combinator or ::shadow pseudo elements in the CSS.
If you able to create the custom elements without using ShadowDOM then you can simply have all your less merge into a single CSS.
Honestly speaking I was unable to create a wc without shadowDOM in polymer. There is a long conversation on github on enabling / disabling and hacking a way to create a wc without shadowDOM here https://github.com/Polymer/polymer/issues/222
One solution would be to have the preprocessor translate .less files into .css and then linking them inside Polymer components, like explained in the official documentation: https://www.polymer-project.org/1.0/docs/devguide/styling#external-stylesheets
Unfortunately this is deprecated. So the other way to go could be to have another step that wraps the preprocessor-generated css files with a dom-module: this way you can follow the Polymer way including the style module inside your components, or using the css file compiled from less if you do things outside Polymer components.
I'm using Gulp for my build process and I found this module very useful:
https://github.com/MaKleSoft/gulp-style-modules
It creates, for every .less file I have in my sources, an .html file with a dom-module wrapped around it, ready to be included in the components' styles.

Sass partial importing

I have an issue with sass compilation.
When I have a project with a partial _partial.scss and have it imported in multiple partial files (because it contains color variables) it will end up in the compiled css multiple times!
This is ugly because the same rule will 'overrule' itself multiple times which makes debugging info (chromium dev tools / firebug) rather unreadable.
I presume there is a solution for all this. I just can't find anything on the issue, anywhere.
The solution is to either not include the same file multiple times or don't have any code that directly outputs CSS in the file you're planning on including more than once. If your variables were in a file by themselves, they could be safely included anywhere you'd like without selector duplication.
Maybe this #mixin helps you: https://github.com/wilsonpage/sass-import-once.
Have a look at the example and note how the reset is only included once in the final CSS.
It seems that just for this, sass (and thus, scss) now have #use instead of #import. From the #use documentation (emphasis is mine):
The simplest #use rule is written #use "", which loads the module at the given URL. Any styles loaded this way will be included exactly once in the compiled CSS output, no matter how many times those styles are loaded.
Sass also discourages further use of #import:
The Sass team discourages the continued use of the #import rule. Sass will gradually phase it out over the next few years, and eventually remove it from the language entirely. Prefer the #use rule instead.
Any projects having this problem could try running the module migrator tool and check if the problem is resolved.

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