When you hear the word “Sass,” what comes to mind? For a lot of people it’s the most popular CSS precompiler to date. Sass takes vanilla CSS and adds variables, nesting, functions, math and more to your stylesheets. With Sass, a front-end coder can start thinking more like a programmer.

Think DRY

DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) is a principle of coding in which you try to repeat yourself as little as possible. Sass makes this possible within CSS. Here are three quick techniques that will make your Sass DRYer.

1. Store color variables
   Variables let you store information to use again and again throughout your stylesheet. This comes in handy for things like brand colors.

   // Color variables
       $brand-color: #123123;
       
       // Sass Usage
       a { color: $brand-color; }
       
       // Compiled CSS
       a { color: #123123; }

2. Create a simple mixin
   Mixins let you reuse style patterns that can be customized by passing them arguments. Mixins have many use cases, but a simple one would be controlling the border-radius of an element.

   // Border radius mixin
       @mixin radius($radius) {
         -webkit-border-radius: $radius;
         -moz-border-radius: $radius;
         border-radius: $radius;
       }
       
       // Sass Usage
       .element { @include radius(10px); }
       
       // Compiled CSS
       .element { 
         -webkit-border-radius: 10px;
         -moz-border-radius: 10px;
         border-radius: 10px;
       }

3. Extend a placeholder class
   Placeholder classes let you reuse the same style on a bunch of elements by extending to other selectors. The extends will compile at the top of the stylesheet in a comma-separated list.

   // Font placeholder
       %base-font-styles {
         font-family: “Helvetica Neue”, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
         font-weight: normal;
         color: #333;
       }
       
       // Sass Usage
       .element { @extend %base-font-styles; }
       .element-b { 
         color: #000; 
         @extend %base-font-styles; 
       }
       
       // Compiled CSS
       .element, .element-b { 
         font-family: “Helvetica Neue”, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
         font-weight: normal;
         color: #333;
       }
       .element-b { color: #000; }

These three techniques open the doors to the powers of Sass and help you repeat yourself less. You’ll save hundreds of lines of code as you learn more about Sass.

If you are a front-end developer or coder and write stylesheets, stop writing vanilla CSS and learn Sass. We’ve got courses specifically tailored for learning Sass. You can start your Treehouse trial today and learn free for 14 days!

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The post 3 Quick Tips for Less Repetition in Stylesheets appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

For anyone who’s ever sat down at a 27″ iMac and thought, “This is a bit small,” LG Electronics have released an extraordinary 34-inch ultra wide display that delivers the kind of real estate designers have previously only dreamt of.

The awesome display has a 21:9 screen ratio and boasts an amazing 3440×1440 pixel resolution.

Winner of the ‘TIPA Best Photo Monitor Award’ at the 2014 Technical Image Press Association Awards, the panoramic workspace offered by the LG 34UM95 is a huge leap forwards technically. It hooks up to a Mac Pro via the Thunderbolt connection, making it an ideal substitute for Apple brand monitors and a piece of kit that can be deployed today.

Web designers have long been calling for greater screen space; tabbing between applications has been introduced to OSs and when that was no longer enough we switched to multiple displays. However, there are several flaws with the multi-screen approach, not least the ugly bevel down the center where the two displays meet.

LG’s seamless solution provides the kind of workspace we need for running numerous applications simultaneously. The new display will be particularly well received by anyone committed to designing in the browser, where numerous project windows are essential for an effective working practice.

It’s natural to work with the space right in front of your eyes—not so easy when the space is split down the middle across two different displays. The 34UM95 gives you the freedom to work with multiple applications without splitting your workspace. More importantly, it makes dragging and dropping between applications a cinch.

Another great bonus is color management. Anyone who has worked with multiple displays will know that color is frequently displayed differently, even if your displays are the same model and correctly calibrated. LG’s ultra-wide display guarantees that every application you’re working in shows you the same color.

With so much effort put into perfecting displays for the home market, it’s exciting to see a company delivering a product specifically for professionals. I defy any creative professional to take a look and not want one.

The opportunity to redefine how you approach your workspace that LG are offering means that, regardless of your workflow, you’ll be working more efficiently, and accomplishing more.

[ This was a sponsored post for LG via Syndicate Ads. ]

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