Steph, I'm sorry to hear you're having these issues, but fear not -- there are solutions!
Disclaimer: I'm a Sass user, and don't really like using Less, but have knowledge of both. 1. With Less (or Sass), you can use what are called Source Maps to help you keep track of where styles are really declared. Here's an article I found specific to Less Source Maps: http://roots.io/using-less-source-maps/ 2. It's true that using Less (or Sass) can easily lead to nested hell and code-bloat. You might try integrating SMACSS or BEM style approaches into your workflow. - http://smacss.com/ - http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/an-introduction-to-the-bem-methodology--cms-19403 3. I have experienced this sort of strangeness with CodeKit before as well. My solution was to simply start using Grunt, and then ultimately Gulp, and related plugins for my style pre-compilation. - https://github.com/gruntjs/grunt-contrib-less - https://github.com/plus3network/gulp-less 4. This is a complicated issue, in that every deployment instance is unique in some way. Many people prefer to pre-compile locally and then only push up the generated styles. Some people like having the compilation take place on the server so that they only have to push up the changed code. There are many, many articles all over the interwebs to guide you on which path seems most appropriate. And please stick with it! It's worth it! - - Joshua Butner j...@vulk.co On May 9, 2014 at 11:18:50 AM, Stephanie Meyer (sme...@envision-creative.com) wrote: I just wanted to put this conversation out to the group because I have been debating it in my head and I want to know what other people might do to address the concerns I have with using LESS. The popularity of it paired with the appeal of its promises, like many, urged me to start incorporating it into my projects. After using it for a few builds, I began to feel like maybe it was more trouble than it's worth. First, it makes troubleshooting in the browser difficult to manage. When I view something in Firebug, for instance, it's giving me the line number to the compiled CSS file. I expect this, but it then takes extra time for me to determine where exactly somethings is that I want to work on. This gets especially tricky with responsive design and using separate LESS files for different widths. It's not something that is impossible to overcome, it just slows me down to have to hunt for it. Next, the nesting concept is awesome for writing the CSS, except it produces bloated code in the end. Then, when you are building responsive sites, to overwrite something takes even more code + more thought because I have to trace the nested elements + more time to accomplish something. This seems LESS efficient. Third, each time I make a change to a stylesheet that is imported into the main stylesheet, I have to go to the main style sheet and save it to compile it. Maybe this is an issue with the compiler (I was using the LESS compiler by Bryan Jones, maker of CodeKit). It seemed like it would compile the main file when saving some imported files but not for others. I couldn't figure out if there was a setting for this that maybe I had magically mistakenly set for some files. I dunno. I recently bought CodeKit, but haven't worked with the LESS compiler. Has anyone else had this issue? Again, it's not huge but it just takes more of my time. Fourth, for Wordpress themes, I have to have the main stylesheet at the root of the theme, and I put any other imported stylesheets into a css folder for a logical and organized file structure. However, once the site has been placed on a web server (moved from my local server) and I am still making edits (testing for cross browser issues, etc) I end up only uploading the compiled stylesheet in the interest of time. Otherwise I have to overwrite all of the files with each edit. This isn't a big deal to do once, but it just becomes time consuming with each edit. Then I have found myself having version control issues because the less files on the web server aren't the updated versions. Yes, I could make sure to update those after a certain period (not with each edit), but when you are working on multiple projects over time it gets a little confusing for what has been updated and what hasn't. There might be other issues that I'm not thinking of at the moment, but this seems enough for now. With all of these little things that take more of my time/extra thought, I began to feel like the pain factor outweighed the benefits. Have other people had these problems? Do you do something that helps alleviate the workflow issues I'm experiencing? I feel like I'm alone in wanting to abandon it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks! -Steph M -- -- Our Web site: http://www.RefreshAustin.org/ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Refresh Austin" group. 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