Miriam Suzanne is an author, performer, musician, designer, and web developer. She has been an active member of the Sass community since developing the Susy layout toolkit in 2009. Miriam creates web software with OddBird, music with Teacup Gorilla, novels and poetry with [WriteyWrite], theater with Vicious Trap, and Lego spaceships with anyone who is interested. She is also the author of Riding SideSaddle* (a multimedia open-source novel), and The Post-Obsolete Book (a performable website).
About SitePoint
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Foreword
When I started contributing to the features and development of Sass more than eight years ago, Id never have predicted that one day it would reshape the face of modern front-end web development. But these days, Sass is a staple technology for web developers and designers. It may not be right for every project, but you absolutely must have Sass in your toolbox.
Even more exciting to me is the amazing community of smart, talented, and enthusiastic designers and developers that has sprung up around a technology created to help front-end developers build stylesheets in a more reusable and maintainable way. From meetups to dedicated conferences, people around the globe have come together to share their excitement for Sassclearly theres more going on here than in your standard web development tool!
Over the years, two of those community members, Miriam Suzanne and Hugo Giraudel, have become some of the most notable users and creators of Sass plugins and best practices for how to use Sass effectively. Miriam created one of the most well-known grid system frameworks, Susy, along with a wonderful testing tool named true, for ensuring that Sass code is working correctly. Hugos writing on websites such as Sass Guidelines has set the standard for how to wield Sass effectively, while his plugins have pushed Sass to the very limits of whats possible. Both have left an indelible mark on Sass, both in the community and on the technology itself. Moreover, they are trusted advisors when early feedback is sought on new features that are being added to the language.
If youre yet to learn Sass, theres no time like the present. I suggest that you jump start your learning of Sass right now with this book. The combined expertise of these authors with more than a decade of learning and crafting world-class websites using Sass means that youre in great hands.
Chris Eppstein, Sass Core Developer
Who Should Read This Book
This book assumes reasonable familiarity with HTML and CSS. You dont need to be familiar with JavaScript or any programming language, although some experience would be helpful. No prior experience with Sass or any other CSS preprocessor is assumed.
Conventions Used
Youll notice that weve used certain typographic and layout styles throughout the book to signify different types of information. Look out for the following items:
Code Samples
Code in this book will be displayed using a fixed-width font, like so:
A Perfect Summers Day
It was a lovely day for a walk in the park. The birds were singing and the kids were all back at school.
If additional code is to be inserted into an existing example, the new code will be displayed in bold:
function animate() {
new_variable = "Hello"; }
Where existing code is required for context, rather than repeat all the code, a vertical ellipsis will be displayed:
function animate() {
return new_variable; }
Some lines of code are intended to be entered on one line, but weve had to wrap them because of page constraints. A indicates a line break that exists for formatting purposes only, and should be ignored:
URL.open("http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2015/05/28/user-style-sheets-come-of-age/");
Tips, Notes, and Warnings
Tip: Hey, You!
Tips will give you helpful little pointers.
Note: Ahem, Excuse Me
Notes are useful asides that are relatedbut not criticalto the topic at hand. Think of them as extra tidbits of information.
Important: Make Sure You Always
pay attention to these important points.