Alex Libby - Mastering PostCSS for Web Design

Alex Libby 's background is in IT supporthe has been involved in supporting end users for almost 20 years in a variety of different environments; a recent change in role now sees Alex working as an MVT test developer for a global distributor based in the UK. Although Alex gets to play with different technologies in his day job, his first true love has always been the open source movement, and in particular, experimenting with CSS/CSS3, jQuery, and HTML5. To date, Alex has written 10 books on subjects such as jQuery, HTML5 video, SASS, and CSS for Packt and has reviewed several more Mastering PostCSS Web Design is Alex's eleventh book for Packt.

I would like to thank my family and friends for their support throughout the process and the reviewers for their valued comments; this book wouldn't be what it is without them! I would also particularly like to thank Andrey Sitnik for his work in producing PostCSS and being really helpful and patient in answering questions about some of its more complex parts. My grateful thanks also to Ernie Salazar from NPM, who helped with issues with publishing the plugins created for this book, and David Clark for his assistance with getting me back on track with the postcss-bem-linter plugin, also used in the book. Thank you allI couldn't have finished the book without your help!

Michael Ebbage is a software architect who specializes in e-commerce and Java technology-based web applications. He created his first web page almost two decades agosince then, he's gone on to develop hundreds of websites for some of the UK's biggest companies (many featuring on the FTSE 100 and 250), as the tools and techniques used to do so have continually changed and evolved.

He has a background in software development and holds a BSc (Hons) in computing and information systems. He is also one of the top contributors to Stack Overflow, where you'll regularly find him answering questions on a wide range of web-related languages and technologies.

I'd like to thank the author, Alex, for the opportunity to be involved with this book. It's been a great learning experience, and I now have a renewed admiration for the amount of knowledge and effort that goes into it. I would also like to thank my beloved wife and son for their patience and support during the time I spent working on reviewing it.

As a developer, I'll bet you have a perfect workflowyou either write styles using plain vanilla CSS or use one of the current processors, such as SASS or Less, to create them. You'll add vendor prefixes using the likes of Autoprefixereither manually or using a tool, such as Grunt or Gulp.

Sounds familiar? Why would you want to disturb something if it works for you, right?

Trouble is, a friend or colleague has started talking about a new processor by the name of PostCSSthey've piqued your interest sufficiently to want to find out more about what it is and how it works.

Well, welcome to the fast-growing ecosystem that is PostCSS! By itself, the tool doesn't do anything, but when paired with the right plugins (and there are hundreds available for use), it has the potential to become a really powerful processor for you. Gone are the days when we have to depend on a monolithic library such as SASS or less. Instead, we can pick and choose exactly which plugins to use based on our project requirements. PostCSS is an immensely quick processor to use; the question is, are you ready for the ride?

Here's hoping the answer is yes; if so, let's make a start.