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How does Sass work?
Knowing how Sass works is a matter of understanding several basic technological concepts:
- Sass can be based on two different technologies: Ruby or LibSass. In this book, we're going to use Sass based on Ruby.
- Sass is a Ruby gem. Gems are packages for use in Ruby. A Ruby gem is a software that runs only on Ruby. Ruby is a programming language, just like PHP, .NET, Java, and so on.
- We can make Sass run via the command line, but we can also run Sass with a third-party application, making the use of the command line unnecessary.
- Sass is a programming/scripting language used to create CSS.
- CSS is a very repetitive language. Sass allows authors to optimize those repetitive tasks and create CSS faster and more efficiently.
- Part of the Sass workflow is when Sass is watching an SCSS file, for example,
book-styles.scss
. When it detects a change in that SCSS file, it then compiles it into a CSS filebook-styles.css
.
Installing Sass
Here are the steps we're going to follow:
- Download the Ruby installer
- Open the command line
- Install the Sass gem
Windows: Download the Ruby installer from the following link:
http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads/
Mac: Ruby comes preinstalled on all Macs, so there's no need to download anything.
Using Sass
What I'm about to show you is completely different to what any other Sass tutorial out there tells you to do. Most of those tutorials complicate things too much. This is the simplest way to use Sass you'll ever read.
The following screenshots are on Windows, but the process can be applied exactly the same regardless of platform.
In the following steps, you will see examples of how the necessary folders and files look after being created, not how to create them:
- Create a
/Demo
folder anywhere on your drive: - Inside that folder, create two subfolders,
/css
and/scss
: - Create a
.scss
file. Go into the/scss
folder and create a file calledstyles.scss
: - Go back to the command line for a minute and follow these steps:
- Make Sass watch your
/scss
and/css
folders by typing this in the command line:sass --watch scss:css
- Make Sass watch the
/scss
and/css
folders.That's it! You are now using Sass!
- Edit the
.scss
file and watch Sass compile it into a.css
file:- Open your text editor (I use Sublime Text).
- Open the
styles.scss
file. - Add some CSS to it.
- Save the
styles.scss
file. - From your command line/terminal, verify that the compiling was successful.
- Open your
styles.css
file and enjoy your new creation.