LESS: DRY Stylesheets with Mixins and Variables (2010)

LESS: DRY Stylesheets with Mixins and Variables

It’s 2010, and we’re all tired of copy-pasting hex codes and repeating the same vendor prefixes across our CSS files. If you're building a "Web 2.0" site with gradients and rounded corners, your CSS is probably a nightmare to maintain.

LESS is here to save us. It extends CSS with dynamic behavior.

Variables

Stop searching and replacing hex codes. Define them once.

@primary-color: #4D926F;
@border-radius: 5px;

header {
  color: @primary-color;
}

.button {
  background-color: @primary-color;
  border-radius: @border-radius;
}

Mixins

Mixins allow you to embed all the properties of a class into another class. This is perfect for those repetitive CSS3 properties.

.rounded-corners(@radius: 5px) {
  -webkit-border-radius: @radius;
  -moz-border-radius: @radius;
  border-radius: @radius;
}

#header {
  .rounded-corners;
}

#footer {
  .rounded-corners(10px);
}

Nesting

Instead of writing long selectors, you can nest them. It matches your HTML structure and makes the code much cleaner.

#header {
  h1 {
    font-size: 26px;
    font-weight: bold;
  }
  p {
    font-size: 12px;
    a {
      text-decoration: none;
      &:hover { border-width: 1px }
    }
  }
}

In 2010, LESS is the leading tool for anyone who wants to write CSS like a programmer. It’s making the web look better, one variable at a time.

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