CSS Programming For .NET Applications – dotlesscss

Its always a pain to handle lengthy CSS files during the web development process. Redundant and repetitive code in a CSS file makes it difficult to handle and understand.

dotless, a .NET port of the popular Ruby LESS library, adds variables, nested rules and operators support to CSS which helps removing the redundant code and hence leads to a better, DRY and Less CSS.

Below is a simple example to show how dotlesscss works:

Traditional CSS


#page-header h1{
font-size:30px;
color:#3366cc;
margin:0px;
padding:0px;
}


#faq h1{
font-size:30px;
color:#3366cc;
margin:0px;
padding:0px;
border-bottom:3px solid #000;
}


Using dotlesscss


@main_heading{
font-size:30px;
color:#3366cc;
margin:0px;
padding:0px;
}



#page-header h1{
@main_heading
}



#faq h1{
@main_heading
border-bottom:3px solid #000;
}


That’s why I called it CSS Programming.

Features

• Transparent Less compilation through HttpHandler
• Console Compiler
• Built-in CSS Compression
• Keeps your CSS file DRY (don’t repeat yourself)

dotless is (definitely) a Time-saving ‘CSS Programming’ tool for ASP.Net Developers and it opens the way to become a CSS Programmer as well.