# Sass versus LESS

Quoting, "One of the hot new trends in web design is <span class="caps">CSS</span> pre-processed languages and there’s two big ones vying for your attention—LESS and Sass. <span class="caps">LESS</span> and Sass are both ways of writing <span class="caps">CSS</span> code with a syntax that allows you to use features not yet available with Cascading Style Sheets (<span class="caps">CSS</span>), such as variables, nesting, conditionals, and more.

Pre-processed <span class="caps">CSS</span> languages add features to <span class="caps">CSS</span> that aren’t there yet—like variables, conditionals, and functions. They’re called pre-processed, because their final step is a processing, also called compiling, that converts the pre-processed language to regular <span class="caps">CSS</span>. In a nutshell, what you use on your site ends up being plain vanilla <span class="caps">CSS</span>, but comes as a result of processing the <span class="caps">LESS</span>, Sass, or other pre-processed language files you create." *via [Lynda.com blog](http://blog.lynda.com/2012/07/20/an-introduction-to-less-and-sass-pre-processed-css-languages/)*

Review links—

- [http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/09/09/an-introduction-to-less-and-comparison-to-sass/](http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/09/09/an-introduction-to-less-and-comparison-to-sass/)
- [http://css-tricks.com/sass-vs-less/](http://css-tricks.com/sass-vs-less/)
- [http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/sass-vs-less/](http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/sass-vs-less/)
- [http://blog.lynda.com/2012/07/20/an-introduction-to-less-and-sass-pre-processed-css-languages/](http://blog.lynda.com/2012/07/20/an-introduction-to-less-and-sass-pre-processed-css-languages/)

Lynda.com has modules on the topic—

- **<span class="caps">CSS</span> with <span class="caps">LESS</span> and Sass**, [http://www.lynda.com/](http://www.lynda.com/)<span class="caps">CSS</span>-tutorials/<span class="caps">CSS</span>-<span class="caps">LESS</span>-<span class="caps">SASS</span>/107921-2.html
- **Responsive <span class="caps">CSS</span> with Sass and Compass**, [http://www.lynda.com/](http://www.lynda.com/)<span class="caps">CSS</span>-tutorials/Responsive-<span class="caps">CSS</span>-Sass-Compass/140777-2.html

Resources—

- [http://sass-lang.com/](http://sass-lang.com/)
- [http://lesscss.org/](http://lesscss.org/)
- [http://incident57.com/codekit/](http://incident57.com/codekit/)
- [http://gruntjs.com/](http://gruntjs.com/)
- [http://compass-style.com/](http://compass-style.com/)
- [http://css-tricks.com/semantic-class-names/](http://css-tricks.com/semantic-class-names/)
- [http://codepen.io/](http://codepen.io/)