Front enders be warned, its hard, but worth it
First, if Chris E., creator of Compass, wanders over and reads this, I apologize if I was harassing you with my questions. I’ll post them in the document support section from now on.
Compass does not feel like it is written for non-programmers (which is probably fine for most users and the creator). Why, you ask would that be ok? Because I don’t feel that was their intention. I’ve read that they want to make Sass/SCSS more accessible to people new to it, but if that is true, they is a lot of work. To use them, you need the command line. How many of you are familiar with that? If you are young and don’t remember DOS, it is intimidating. We are used to interfaces, right? I mean, look at the editors we use. The command line has NOTHING to look at. Literally. So besides trying to learn a cool…not sure what to actually call Compass or Sass…technology? You have to dive into using the command line. Forget Dreamweaver for editing your .scss file, won’t work (at least not the version I have CS4)…which doesn’t matter all that much to me since I am using NetBeans and Notepad++. My point is, actually USING these things is great. Getting there sucks.
The install process is a bitch. At least if you go the Ruby way, and I am not sure there is another way, considering it is a gem, but then you have to wrap your brains around that one, too. I know that this sounds discouraging, but I am here to tell you that ALL that crap…is worth it. Just be prepared for some serious learning and a lot of searching.
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