Hello Forum! Need some help here!

[Abhishek Suresh]

Hey Guys,

To begin with I am very fascinated with the concept of using LESS to improve the coding of my CSS. As I am new to this and an amateur, I would love to get some inputs on the following. 

Here what I'm working on - I have a ASP .NET 4 website that runs on Amazon Servers (MySQL as DB), I have a very unorganized CSS. I work on VS2010

1. If I am going to work on a Scale-able CSS architecture (Where I keep adding new modules and applications to my website), is it advisable to use LESS on a long term basis?

2. Should I use dotless or less.js in terms of performance and ease of usage?

3. Is there a step by step tutorial for me to refer? i would be glad if there was one as I am unable to get dotless to work on my VS2010. 

I would be grateful if someone could help me out here!

Thanks in advance!

Abhishek

[Luke Page]

My own advice.

1. Yes, but be careful.. just because something is allowed in less it doesn't mean it is recommended. I try and use the minimum required to make the CSS scalable.
2. I use dot less because
a) I don't have a node environment to run less.is in.
b) dot less is more open source.. I found pull requests to support new css features still awaiting the one person running less.J's to pull them
c) I don't want code to run client side and slow things down.
d) I want to inject variables from c# into less for turning.
e) I'm working on 2 extensions, one for sprites, one for rtl which wouldn't work with less.js
3. Have you looked at the site and wiki? What are you stuck on?

[Abhishek Suresh]

Hey Luke, 

Thanks for the insight. I think i will go ahead and experiment carefully with dotless.

Regarding where I am stuck, I have followed the steps provided in the dotlesscss.org website. The moment I rename the css file into a .less file, I am unable to edit it. I have been using Dreamweaver to structure the CSS and I am very comfortable in viewing the changes that I make live on the browser. I want to implement the dotless and also get a live preview of the styling that I do. I have been searching for a tutorial for me to achieve that. If you could point me in the right direction to start off, it would be great! 

Thanks!

[Luke Page]

use the dotless watcher included in the dotless package and set it up
to "watch" your less and convert it to css every time you save a file.

Then your browser can look at the css file while you edit the less.

[Daniel Hölbling]

You can start the watcher by doing:

dotless.compiler.exe --watch <filename.less>

[Abhishek Suresh]

Thanks a ton Tigraine and Luke! 

I will try them out and ping back if I come across any hurdle. ;)