LESS Course And Certification

What is LESS? 

LESS which is the acronym for Leaner Style Sheets but regularly referred to as LESS is a dynamic style sheet language preprocessor whose code can be compiled into Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) styles and executed on the server-side or on the client's browser.

LESS was developed by Alexis Sellier, LESS is greatly inspired by SaSS and has further influenced the more recent "SCSS" syntax of SASS, which inherited its CSS-like block formatting syntax.

LESS is an open-source project. Its first version was developed with Ruby, but, in its succeding versions, the use of Ruby was removed and replaced by JavaScript. The syntax of Less which is indented is like a nested meta-language, as ‘legal’ CSS is a valid LESS code with the same semantics.

LESS Mechanisms

LESS has the following mechanisms: 

1. Variables,

2. Mixins,

3. Nesting,

4. Functions, and

5. Operators.

The major distinction between LESS and other precompilers of CSS: is that Less allows you to compile your styles to regular CSS in real-time by means of less.js on the browser. 

Features of LESS

There are many features of LESS and some of them are:

1. Variables: Less allows developers to define variables. The variables in Less are declared with the “at” symbol (@). The assignment of variables is done using a colon (:). In the process of the translation, the values stored in the variables are inserted into the output CSS document.

2. Mixins: LESS Mixins allows you to join together all the properties of a class into another class by using the class name as one of its properties, therefore, making it act as a sort of constant or variable. They can also act as functions, and accept arguments. Regular CSS does not have support for Mixins: Any code that is repeated must be repeated in each location. LESS Mixins allow for a better, efficient and it provides a cleaner code repetition, as well as easier alteration of code.

3. Functions and operations: LESS provides various features for operations and functions. Operations in LESS allows you to carry out addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of property colors and values, which can then be used to create very complex relationships between properties. Functions here map fewer codes one-to-one with JavaScript codes, allowing you to dynamically manipulate values.

4. LESS allows for a much cleaner and more readable code to be written in an organized way.

5. With LESS, you can define a style and it then re-uses it throughout the code.

6. LESS is a superset of CSS that is based on javascript.

Benefits of LESS

There are many benefits of learning about LESS below are some of them are:

1. LESS is faster and easier.

2. LESS allows for a more cleaner code structure due to the use of Code Nesting.

3. LESS codes are more simple and well organized as compared to regular CSS codes.

4. Less has supports for all popular browsers.

5. Modification/Updation can be achieved faster because of the use of LESS variables.

6. Less is time-saving as compared to regular CSS because you can create functions and reuse them.

7. Coding with LESS is faster because of the list of operators that it provides. 

Installation of LESS

Let us now see how the installation of LESS is carried out.

1. Step one:  We need NodeJs to run LESS examples. So you would have to first download NodeJs to be able to see LESS work live.

2. Step two: Execute the setup file that you just downloaded in other to install the Node.js on your computer.

3. Step three: Next,  it's to Install LESS on your computer server through a package manager called NPM(Node Package Manager). Run the following command in the command prompt.

npm install -g less

Example of a LESS Styling

.container {
   h1 {
      font-size: 25px;
      color:#E45456;
   }
   p {
      font-size: 25px;
      color:#3C7949;
   }

   .myclass {
      h1 {
         font-size: 25px;
         color:#E45456;
      }
      p {
         font-size: 25px;
         color:#3C7949;
      }
   }
}

LESS Course Outline

LESS - Introduction

LESS - Overview

LESS - Installation

LESS - Nested Rules

LESS - Nested Directives and Bubbling

LESS - Operations

LESS - Escaping

LESS - Functions

LESS - Namespaces and Accessors

LESS - Scope

LESS - Comments

LESS - Importing

LESS - Variables

LESS - Extend

LESS - Mixins

LESS - Parametric Mixins

LESS - Mixins as Functions

LESS - Passing Rulesets to Mixins

LESS - Import Directives

LESS - Import Options

LESS - Mixin Guards

LESS - CSS Guards

LESS - Loops

LESS - Merge

LESS - Parent Selectors

LESS - Functions

LESS - Frameworks

LESS - Video Lectures

LESS - Exams And Certification