Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Fronteers talk Digiti — "Pre-processing"
Search
Sponsored
·
Your Podcast. Everywhere. Effortlessly.
Share. Educate. Inspire. Entertain. You do you. We'll handle the rest.
→
houbenkristof
June 22, 2012
Technology
8
620
Fronteers talk Digiti — "Pre-processing"
SASS, COMPASS & LESS
houbenkristof
June 22, 2012
Tweet
Share
More Decks by houbenkristof
See All by houbenkristof
Prototyping for the real world.
houbenkristof
1
86
Extending Sketch App with awesomeness.
houbenkristof
3
270
My inner-design-monkey
houbenkristof
1
140
De knop (The button)
houbenkristof
0
69
Challenge accepted!
houbenkristof
1
250
Fronteers conference 2011 summary
houbenkristof
3
150
Other Decks in Technology
See All in Technology
セキュリティについて学ぶ会 / 2026 01 25 Takamatsu WordPress Meetup
rocketmartue
1
280
AzureでのIaC - Bicep? Terraform? それ早く言ってよ会議
torumakabe
1
120
【5分でわかる】セーフィー エンジニア向け会社紹介
safie_recruit
0
42k
Kiro IDEのドキュメントを全部読んだので地味だけどちょっと嬉しい機能を紹介する
khmoryz
0
150
GSIが複数キー対応したことで、俺達はいったい何が嬉しいのか?
smt7174
3
140
All About Sansan – for New Global Engineers
sansan33
PRO
1
1.3k
Data Hubグループ 紹介資料
sansan33
PRO
0
2.7k
Bill One急成長の舞台裏 開発組織が直面した失敗と教訓
sansantech
PRO
1
250
CDKで始めるTypeScript開発のススメ
tsukuboshi
1
310
Introduction to Sansan, inc / Sansan Global Development Center, Inc.
sansan33
PRO
0
3k
コスト削減から「セキュリティと利便性」を担うプラットフォームへ
sansantech
PRO
3
1.2k
ブロックテーマでサイトをリニューアルした話 / 2026-01-31 Kansai WordPress Meetup
torounit
0
430
Featured
See All Featured
The Hidden Cost of Media on the Web [PixelPalooza 2025]
tammyeverts
2
170
[RailsConf 2023] Rails as a piece of cake
palkan
59
6.3k
The State of eCommerce SEO: How to Win in Today's Products SERPs - #SEOweek
aleyda
2
9.5k
Connecting the Dots Between Site Speed, User Experience & Your Business [WebExpo 2025]
tammyeverts
11
820
The Organizational Zoo: Understanding Human Behavior Agility Through Metaphoric Constructive Conversations (based on the works of Arthur Shelley, Ph.D)
kimpetersen
PRO
0
230
How To Stay Up To Date on Web Technology
chriscoyier
791
250k
Digital Projects Gone Horribly Wrong (And the UX Pros Who Still Save the Day) - Dean Schuster
uxyall
0
290
Making Projects Easy
brettharned
120
6.6k
[SF Ruby Conf 2025] Rails X
palkan
0
740
30 Presentation Tips
portentint
PRO
1
210
Refactoring Trust on Your Teams (GOTO; Chicago 2020)
rmw
35
3.3k
Easily Structure & Communicate Ideas using Wireframe
afnizarnur
194
17k
Transcript
Pre-processing INCEPTION ALL OVER AGAIN!
RIP ARJAN EISING He’s not really dead :)
Hi, I’m Kristof @houbenkristof —
[email protected]
Front-end/design at Mobile Vikings
I’m always up for a Challenge
Run a small firm CALLED TREESHADOW MEDIA
Creative Brewski TOGETHER WITH @TOMCLAUS & @DENNISJANSSEN
LEt’s TALK CSS
"You don’t need a new stylesheet syntax, CSS is simple
and you’re a moron if you can’t do it."
C’est très simple
Not that easy to maintain
Stylesheets evolve
Simplicity creates complexity
Keep things DRY DON’T REPEAT YOURSELF
we should Reference to existing information
"CSS is the weakest link in the web developers toolbox.
The problem goes deeper than CSS’s lack of variables. Unlike the “function” in programming, CSS has no fundamental building block."
It’s all about Abstractions
CSS PRIMITIVES HAVE NO MEANING
That’s our job!
Abstractions ARE GROUPS OF PRIMITIVES
Abstractions are not abstract to us
We give BUILDING BLOCKs meaning SO IT MAKES IT EASIER
FOR US TO UNDERSTAND
Our DESIGNS CHANGE
A kitten dies every time that happens
Find & replace OH PLEASE, DON’T GET ME STARTED!
Client: “We want #000 to be #333 but not the
user information underneath my #bada55 body text, oh while you're at it could you position absolute that element and rotate it a gazillion degrees, … oh, #333 doesn't look that great after all… Change it back!”
You’re screwed
What do we NEED?
The interior decorator!
Decorates with parts
He does not make those parts LAMPS, TABLES, CHAIRS…
PArts for PArts
Oh my god YOU REUSED A BUTTON!
When elements are common REUSE tHEM!
Focus! ON WHAT IS IMPORTANT, YOU MUST!
Hard to upgrade Customized third party stylesheets
Clearly we are in need of some Pre-processing
"In computer science, a preprocessor is a program that processes
its input data to produce output that is used as input to another program.” — Wikipedia
Syntactic CUSTOMIZED SYNTAX, EXTEND THE LANGUAGE, ADD IMPROVEMENTS
ex. SASS & LESS
Keeping things maintainable
SASS BY HAMPTON CATLIN & NATHAN WEIZENBAUM
Written in Ruby
Don’t worry, there are also GUI’s
Watches folders & compiles on save
2007 ORIGINAL SASS SYNTAX
None
Hard to convert existing CSS TO SASS
2010 SASS 3 INTRODUCES SCSS
None
Regular CSS = VALID SCSS
BUT WAIT there’s also COMPASS
It’s chock full of the web’s best reusable patterns.
None
None
Also contains other cool features IMAGE SPRITING, COLOR FUNCTIONS
None
None
You say LESS
It’s all javascript ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN RUBY BY ALEXIS SELLIER
Regular CSS = VALID LESS
LESS INSPIRED SCSS
VS LESS SASS Thanks to Chris Eppstein - https://gist.github.com/674726
Learning curve YOU HAVE TO KNOW JACK SH*T ABOUT THE
CLI
CODEKIT IS HOT!
CSS3 Helpers SASS HAS COMPASS, LESS DOES NOT
Variables
None
Mixins
Extending
Custom units in SASS MAKING THE LANGUAGE MORE FUTUREPROOF
Looping
DEMO
Thank you!
Resources: http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/09/09/an-introduction-to-less-and- comparison-to-sass/ http://sonspring.com/journal/sass-for-designers http://css-tricks.com/sass-vs-less/ http://chriseppstein.github.com/blog/2009/09/20/why-stylesheet-abstraction- matters/
Questions?