Sass and Compass for Designers

by Ben Frain

If you know HTML and CSS, then you can have all the power of Sass and Compass at your disposal. This step-by-step guide will take you through the time-saving features that makes it so much easier to create cross-browser CSS. Overview In Detail The CSS preprocessor, Sass, is becoming the de-facto standard for producing cross-browser CSS more maintainable and with more ease. It supercharges CSS with features that make previously difficult and time-consuming tasks trivial. This book concentrates on distilling the techniques in a straightforward manner making it accessible to all, even to those that only know HTML and CSS. Written by the author of the bestselling "Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS3", Sass and Compass for Designers will explain everything you need to get Sass and Compass installed, mastered, and making your life easier. There will be no perplexing terminology or baffling syntax left unexplained. We'll get you set up and then build a site together, step by step, using the incredible power of Sass and Compass. We will start with a completely unstyled HTML document and build a responsive Sass and Compass powered website step by step. Sass and Compass make CSS easy. You'll learn how to manipulate color in the stylesheet with a single command, create responsive grids with ease, automatically create image sprites, and create CSS3 powered rules that work across all modern browsers. "Sass and Compass for Designers" explains how to produce great CSS easier than ever before. What you will learn from this book Approach A step-by-step tutorial guide, taking you through how to build a responsive Sass and Compass powered website. Who this book is written for If you understand HTML and CSS, this book is all you need to take your code to the next level with Sass and Compass. No prior understanding of CSS preprocessors or programming conventions is needed.

Genres: Technology, Web

251 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Radu · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent starting point if you're looking to get started on writing your CSS in Sass and using the Compass framework for authoring. It's well structured, starts with basics and works its way up to more and more complex examples and exercises. I for one didn't go through the entire book because it got a bit too much into details and I choose to already apply what I had read and then learn the rest practically as I go. Would definitely recommend this to anyone looking to improve their CSS coding by means of efficiency and scalability.

[Anthuan Vasquez · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first introduction to learning SASS was through this book. At the time, the Compass framework was very popular, so the content quickly became outdated a few years later. Since Compass relied on Ruby, it was often too slow when compiling large projects. Eventually, Node-Sass and LibSass emerged as the next generation tools for SASS developers, offering much better performance.

[Emin Altan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is outdated, and compass is deprecated. But the book has beneficial for sass beginners.

[Shoogle Designs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply empowering!

A step-by-step Sass guide, perfect for the designers who find the command line interface intimidating, and right up the street of the more advanced folks having started to develop with both Sass and Compass like me.

Very much enjoyed the simple and humorous tone of the book. Definitely a great reference to go back to while working away as it's packed with valuable background information, easily understandable instructions, tips and tricks.

Ben uses a real use case to show us why and how we should use Sass and Compass. It's both instructive and resourceful. You literally shouldn't be allowed to go the Sassy way without reading Ben's book.

Do yourselves a favor and save you some time by reading it all from day one.

[Dennis Gaebel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ben Frain is an insightful developer and designer that knows how to write in plain english when it comes to tech. Not only is this book directed at designers, but it's also just as valuable for developers. Heck, it's valuable for anyone who uses Sass and Compass.

As an author his empathy toward a multitude of workflows is heart felt. He cares about the CLI people just as much as he cares about those who desire a GUI or are pure Windows fanatics! There's something for everyone no matter the platform or workflow.

Do you write Sass? Do you like Compass? Don't think you know everything? Buy this book. You won't regret it. Get your pre-processor on and learn the awesome-ness that is Sass and Compass from the man that knows best.

[Russell Wicks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always found it a bit of a pain not being able to apply DRY principles and the like to CSS so when I found out about SASS and Compass I was pretty excited. The book is exactly what I have been looking for, Ben writes the book in a fresh and easy manner which makes it easy to take in quickly and he also includes clear instructions on how to setup Ruby which is great.

[Doaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

simple way for designer to start using sass and compass
very nice book

[Igor Vigasin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing. I think this is a must have book for anyone who are working with web ui technologies. The information provided in correct order , without too many "life stories". Big respect

[Xiaoxuan Wang · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better to refer online tutorial while reading the book. Some of the mixins have been outdated.