What the hell is LESS?

If you have kept up with me, then hopefully you read my post on Sass 3. If not, well hopefully you are not out of the loop and have at least heard of it. This post is about LESS and LESS.js (which you can read about here). LESS used to be a Ruby Gem install, not sure what that means exactly other than it is a pain the ass to install if you are not familiar with the command line.

There is a brilliant new way to actually use LESS, and that is to simply use javascript. Nothing to install, just include this line:

<script src="http://lesscss.googlecode.com/files/less-1.0.18.min.js"></script>

You will also need a link to a LESS file, which will look something like this:

<link rel="stylesheet/less" href="css/test.less" type="text/css" />

A simple text file with a .less extension.

So what exactly is LESS? I would define it as a simplified and easier to use version of Sass. It incorporates the cool parts of Sass, such as variables, mixins and nested rules. Operations are also included, but I haven’t delved too deep into it yet. But a small test was all it took to see what I liked and disliked. First, lets take a look at the VERY basic page I did.

Click here to see the demo.

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