Learning a new computer language, well an old language would be easy and well time spent. Last night, I was reading an article from CSS-Tricks website about the writing less CSS with SCSS. The purpose of SASS or Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets is to nest your CSS properties into one selector and overwrite your CSS file. You have to use Ruby, computer programming resource to have SASS work and test on most browsers. Not only SASS add nesting rules, you can also include variables and mixins for math operations. There are a few math operations such as ‘$’ and ‘/’ that are use often for the extension language just as you use it in PERL, PHP, Java, and C++. I don’t know any of these computer languages but they all function the same way, just extra work. I have not gotten that far learning to adept to operations and how it would be useful for sizing fonts and images.
The most important thing I am concern about SCSS is reviewing and editing the CSS file. When I create and compile from a SCSS file to a CSS file, all my selectors do not break lines and it is hard to read. I have to create spaces between the selectors. I am not really complaining about breaks but it would be nice if the CSS was formatted like SCSS file.
So why create extra work for two files?
When I first heard about SASS and SCSS last year from a co-worker, I used to think it was a joke and wonder why it was not useful at my old job. A year later, I realize I can use your selectors to nest your properties into one and compile data from Ruby’s script. Ruby creates a new file name and overwrites your CSS files after saving your SCSS file. Not only I learned two languages but three. You cannot do much in Ruby but define variables, strings and math functions. In addition, you can also install programs, files from GIT or “gems”, compile, and trace files just like PERL. I once learned PERL from a online class and was frustrated with the language. . . That is another story I may write in my blog. In the meantime, I am going to use Ruby as my calculator and say, ‘Hello #{@name}!’ to me every time I use I use it.
If you are a developer or daredevil designer, you should read about the CSS extension, Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets tutorial on sass-lang.com and have fun with Ruby!
