What is a LESS?

LESS is an abbreviated Learner Style styles, is an open source pre-processor language for CSS, The preprocessor is writing a code using a superset of CSS features, compiling this code to native CSS, and browser understanding CSS styles.

CSS uses to describe how the UI page is displayed to the end-user using different styles, layouts, themes, etc.

CSS is very useful for simple applications, when the application is large, reusing the styles and UI resources is a nightmare with CSS.

We can use LESS which contains a superset of CSS with basic programming language features variables, mixins, and functions.

It provides reusable code in CSS and modularity and helps to organize the code in larger projects.

It provides templates and variables, functions that can be declared once and reused in multiple places across multiple modules and applications.

Prerequisites to learn

You must know HTML and CSS programming languages.

What are the Advantages of LESS over CSS

  • Open source and support all versions of CSS
  • Provide Arithmetic operators
  • Basic programming languages with reusable CSS snippets
  • Separation of various UI styles to make it clean and simple
  • Helps UX and UI designers to code the reusable assets
  • Number of lines of code will be reduced when compared with CSS
  • Maintenance is easy as a group of similar styles is placed in a single file.
  • It supports modular design
  • Clear separation of code by features or files
  • Easy to write extended themes and layouts

LESS Disadvantages

It is difficult to learn Syntax and features for developers initially. During the development stage, LESS or any preprocessor tools need an extra step to compile CSS. Browsers did not understand the LESS syntax. It is difficult to debug to fix any CSS issues. A learning curve exists as a need to learn the syntax and programming language concepts. Generate CSS and source map files which source maps are extra files Needs development tools to edit and code LESS code

Features

variables: Declare a variable with value once, reuse it in multiple places Mixins:

IS LESS the same as CSS?

CSS is a style sheet for browsers, whereas LESS is a superset of CSS with extended programming features like variables, mixins, operators, and functions. Both are different, browsers understand CSS code and LESS code does not understand. So LESS code needs to compile to generate CSS at runtime during development.

LESS provides extendable and maintainable compared with CSS. It helps developers to reuse the code across multiple files and helps to design themes and layout better across applications.

File extension for CSS LESS files

File extension is .less.

less extension files contain CSS code with programmable feature syntax.

The files created with the .less extension are read and parsed by compilers only.

javascript has compilers and preprocesses less code to generate CSS content.

How do you open write LESS files? LESS files are opened in any normal text editor like TextPad or notepad++. if you want validation and syntax format and auto-generation of code, You need to have an advanced editor. Visual Studio Code, Intelli IDEA, and Eclipse has a plugin to work with LESS files

What is the difference between CSS and LESS?

LESS is a preprocessor with more advanced features, Compiled it to generate CSS Code

CSS is a style language for web applications.