air less parser

Earlier this year I gave less a little spin. Even though I had my reservations (and I must say they still haven't faded completely) I kept coming back to the less framework because it does make css3 development a lot easier. Every day usage turned up some new problems though, not so much related to less itself but to its somewhat limited development options, especially on Windows. Luckily a new tool was released yesterday to help us out a little.

developing with less

While using less to write css is incredibly easy, using it for development is somewhat of a chore. Either you use the less javascript library, but that has poor support across different browsers (I've only really seen in work well in Firefox), or you can install a server-side parser, but that's a bit over-the-top for local (often static) template development. And then there is of course the command line method, something I won't even begin to discuss.

In theory it shouldn't be all that much trouble to develop in Firefox, then parse the css once and start checking it in other browsers. I clearly say theory, because web design is never that simple. There are always some small changes close to the deadline that need to be processed, or some small bugs popping up that were missed in the first quality check. Before you know it, you're constantly switching from and to less and css files in your static templates. A dreadful job and hardly productive.

poor windows support

What you need is a tool that converts less files to css files the moment you save your less file. That way you can include the css files in your static templates, but keep developing in less. Other platforms (like Mac and Linux) have such tools already, but for some reason they never made it to Windows. That void is finally filled with the new Air Less Parser.

The tool is currently in beta, but has solid project management functionaly, a feedback log and an option to automatically scan and parse folders (and subfolders) whenever files are altered. If you don't want this you can still opt to parse manually. Just fire up the air app, start adding your projects and begin development in less without ever having to worry about the generated css.

what the future brings

The tool is currently in early beta, but should function as advertised. New features are already planned though. Expect to find minification options and growl-like notification messages in the near future. So without further ado:

Air Less Parser