Less (style sheet language)

Less

Developer		Alexis Sellier, Dmitry Fadeyev
First appeared	2009; 15 years ago (2009)
Stable release	4.2.0[1]  / 7 September 2023; 7 months ago (7 September 2023)
Sass, Less Framework, Bootstrap (v3)

Less (Leaner Style Sheets; sometimes stylized as LESS) is a dynamic preprocessor style sheet language that can be compiled into Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and run on the client side or server side.^[2] Designed by Alexis Sellier, Less is influenced by

Less allows variables to be defined. Variables in Less are defined with an at sign (@). Variable assignment is done with a colon (:).

During translation, the values of the variables are inserted into the output CSS document.^[2]

@pale-green-color: #4D926F;

#header {
  color: @pale-green-color;
}
h2 {
  color: @pale-green-color;
}

The code above in Less would compile to the following CSS code.

#header {
  color: #4D926F;
}
h2 {
  color: #4D926F;
}

Mixins

Mixins allows embedding all the properties of a class into another class by including the class name as one of its property, thus behaving as a sort of

.rounded-corners (@radius: 5px 10px 8px 2px) {
  -webkit-border-radius: @radius;
  -moz-border-radius: @radius;
  border-radius: @radius;
}

#header {
  .rounded-corners;
}
#footer {
  .rounded-corners(10px 25px 35px 0px);
}

#header {
  -webkit-border-radius: 5px 10px 8px 2px;
  -moz-border-radius: 5px 10px 8px 2px;
  border-radius: 5px 10px 8px 2px;
}
#footer {
  -webkit-border-radius: 10px 25px 35px 0px;
  -moz-border-radius: 10px 25px 35px 0px;
  border-radius: 10px 25px 35px 0px;
}

#header {
  h1 {
    font-size: 26px;
    font-weight: bold;
  }
  p {
    font-size: 16px;
    a {
      text-decoration: none;
      color: red;
      &:hover {
        border-width: 1px;
        color: #fff;
      }
    }
  }
}

#header h1 {
  font-size: 26px;
  font-weight: bold;
}
#header p {
  font-size: 16px;
}
#header p a {
  text-decoration: none;
  color: red;
}
#header p a:hover {
  border-width: 1px;
  color: #fff;
}

@the-border: 1px;
@base-color: #111;
@red:        #842210;

#header {
  color: @base-color * 3;
  border-left: @the-border;
  border-right: @the-border * 3;
}
#footer {
  color: @base-color + #003300;
  border-color: desaturate(@red, 10%);
}

#header {
  color: #333;
  border-left: 1px;
  border-right: 3px;
}
#footer {
  color: #114411;
  border-color: #7d2717;
}

Less is inspired by Sass.[6]^[3] Sass was designed to both simplify and extend CSS, so things like curly braces were removed from the syntax. Less was designed to be as close to CSS as possible, and as a result existing CSS can be used as valid Less code.^[7]

The newer versions of Sass also introduced a CSS-like syntax called SCSS (Sassy CSS).

Use on sites

Less can be applied to sites in a number of ways. One option is to include the less.js JavaScript file to convert the code on-the-fly. The browser then renders the output CSS. Another option is to render the Less code into pure CSS and upload the CSS to a site. With this option no .less files are uploaded and the site does not need the less.js JavaScript converter.

Less software

See also

• Sass (style sheet language)
• Stylus (style sheet language)

References

External links

• Official website