PostCSS

Last updated
PostCSS
Developer(s) Andrey Sitnik, Ben Briggs, Bogdan Chadkin
Initial releaseNovember 4, 2013;11 years ago (2013-11-04)
Stable release
8.4.47 [1]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 14 September 2024;55 days ago (14 September 2024)
Repository postcss
Written in JavaScript
Operating system Cross-platform
Available inEnglish
Type CSS development tool
License MIT License [2]
Website postcss.org

PostCSS is a software development tool that uses JavaScript-based plugins to automate routine CSS operations. [3] It was designed by Andrey Sitnik with the idea taking its origin in his front-end work for Evil Martians. [4]

Contents

Functionality

PostCSS workflow PostCSS scheme.svg
PostCSS workflow

PostCSS is a framework to develop CSS tools. [5] It can be used to develop a template language such as Sass and LESS. [6]

The PostCSS core consists of: [7]

Features are made available through plugins. The plugins are small programs working with the object tree. After the core has transformed a CSS string into an object tree, the plugins analyze and change the tree. Then PostCSS generates a new CSS string for the plugin-changed tree.

PostCSS and its plugins are written in JavaScript and distributed through npm, which offer APIs for low-level JavaScript operations.

There are official tools making it possible to use PostCSS with build systems such as Webpack, [8] Gulp, [9] and Grunt. [10] There is also a console interface available. [11] Browserify or Webpack can be used to open PostCSS in a browser. [12]

Syntaxes

PostCSS allows changing the parser and generator. In this case, PostCSS could be used to work with the Less [13] and SCSS [14] sources. However, PostCSS on its own cannot compile Sass or Less to CSS. What it does is change the original files — for instance, by sorting the CSS properties or checking the code for mistakes. PostCSS supports SugarSS. [15]

Plugins

PostCSS plugins perform different CSS processing tasks ranging from analysis and properties sorting to minification.

The complete plugin list can be found on postcss.parts, with some examples listed below.

History

During the course of the Rework project, the idea of modular CSS processing was suggested by TJ Holowaychuk September 1, 2012. [28] February 28, 2013, TJ expressed it in public. [29]

March 14, 2013, Andrey Sitnik's front-end work for Evil Martians resulted in Autoprefixer, a Rework-based plugin. [30] Initially, the plugin name was rework-vendors. [31]

As Autoprefixer grew, Rework could no longer to meet its needs. [32] September 7, 2013, [33] Andrey Sitnik started to develop PostCSS based on the Rework ideas. [34]

In 3 months, the first PostCSS plugin, grunt-pixrem was released. [35] December 22, 2013, Autoprefixer version 1.0 migrated to PostCSS. [36]

For PostCSS, the primary style focus is alchemy. [37] The project logo represents the philosopher's stone. [38] Major and minor PostCSS versions get their names after the Ars Goetia demons. [39] For instance, version 1.0.0 is called Marquis Decarabia.

The term postprocessor has caused some confusion. [40] The PostCSS team used the term to show that PostCSS was not a template language (preprocessor) but a CSS tool. However, some developers think the term postprocessor would better suit browser tools (for instance, -prefix-free). [41] The situation has become even more complicated after the release of PreCSS. Now, instead of postprocessor, the PostCSS team use the term processor. [42]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">KDevelop</span> Integrated development environment

KDevelop is a free and open-source integrated development environment (IDE) for Unix-like computer operating systems and Windows. It provides editing, navigation and debugging features for several programming languages, and integration with build automation and version-control systems, using a plugin-based architecture.

In computer-based language recognition, ANTLR, or ANother Tool for Language Recognition, is a parser generator that uses a LL(*) algorithm for parsing. ANTLR is the successor to the Purdue Compiler Construction Tool Set (PCCTS), first developed in 1989, and is under active development. Its maintainer is Professor Terence Parr of the University of San Francisco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IntelliJ IDEA</span> Integrated development environment

IntelliJ IDEA is an integrated development environment (IDE) written in Java for developing computer software written in Java, Kotlin, Groovy, and other JVM-based languages. It is developed by JetBrains and is available as an Apache 2 Licensed community edition, and in a proprietary commercial edition. Both can be used for commercial development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NetSurf</span> Web browser

NetSurf is an open-source web browser which uses its own layout engine. Its design goal is to be lightweight and portable. NetSurf provides features including tabbed browsing, bookmarks, and page thumbnailing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FindBugs</span> Software that finds possible errors in Java programs

FindBugs is an open-source static code analyser created by Bill Pugh and David Hovemeyer which detects possible bugs in Java programs. Potential errors are classified in four ranks: (i) scariest, (ii) scary, (iii) troubling and (iv) of concern. This is a hint to the developer about their possible impact or severity. FindBugs operates on Java bytecode, rather than source code. The software is distributed as a stand-alone GUI application. There are also plug-ins available for Eclipse, NetBeans, IntelliJ IDEA, Gradle, Hudson, Maven, Bamboo and Jenkins.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geany</span> Integrated Development Environment

Geany is a free and open-source lightweight GUI text editor using Scintilla and GTK, including basic IDE features. It is designed to have short load times, with limited dependency on separate packages or external libraries on Linux. It has been ported to a wide range of operating systems, such as BSD, Linux, macOS, Solaris and Windows. The Windows port lacks an embedded terminal window; also missing from the Windows version are the external development tools present under Unix, unless installed separately by the user. Among the supported programming languages and markup languages are C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, PHP, HTML, LaTeX, CSS, Python, Perl, Ruby, Pascal, Haskell, Erlang, Vala and many others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CodeLite</span> Integrated development environment

CodeLite is a free and open-source IDE for the C, C++, PHP, and JavaScript (Node.js) programming languages.

Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) is a free and open-source cross-platform data format used to serialize structured data. It is useful in developing programs that communicate with each other over a network or for storing data. The method involves an interface description language that describes the structure of some data and a program that generates source code from that description for generating or parsing a stream of bytes that represents the structured data.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sass (style sheet language)</span> Stylesheet language

Sass is a preprocessor scripting language that is interpreted or compiled into Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). SassScript is the scripting language itself.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Less (style sheet language)</span> Dynamic stylesheet language

Less is a dynamic preprocessor style sheet language that can be compiled into Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and run on the client side or server side. Designed by Alexis Sellier, Less is influenced by Sass and has influenced the newer "SCSS" syntax of Sass, which adapted its CSS-like block formatting syntax. Less is an open source project. Its first version was written in Ruby; however, in the later versions, use of Ruby has been deprecated and replaced by JavaScript. The indented syntax of Less is a nested metalanguage, as valid CSS is valid Less code with the same semantics. Less provides the following mechanisms: variables, nesting, mixins, operators and functions; the main difference between Less and other CSS precompilers is that Less allows real-time compilation via less.js by the browser.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amber Smalltalk</span>

Amber Smalltalk, formerly named Jtalk, is an implementation of the programming language Smalltalk-80, that runs on the JavaScript runtime of a web browser. It is designed to enable client-side development using Smalltalk. The programming environment in Amber is named Helios.

Foundation is a free responsive front-end framework, providing a responsive grid and HTML and CSS UI components, templates, and code snippets, including typography, forms, buttons, navigation and other interface elements, as well as optional functionality provided by JavaScript extensions. Foundation is an open source project, and was formerly maintained by ZURB. Since 2019, Foundation has been maintained by volunteers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stylus (style sheet language)</span> Stylesheet preprocessor language

Stylus is a dynamic stylesheet preprocessor language that is compiled into Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Its design is influenced by Sass and Less. It is regarded as the fourth most used CSS preprocessor syntax. It was created by TJ Holowaychuk, a former programmer for Node.js and the creator of the Luna language. It is written in JADE and Node.js.

Web Components are a set of features that provide a standard component model for the web allowing for encapsulation and interoperability of individual HTML elements. Web Components are a popular approach when building microfrontends.

ContentTools is an open-source WYSIWYG editor for HTML content written in JavaScript/CoffeeScript by Anthony Blackshaw of Getme Limited.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Webpack</span> Open-source JavaScript module bundler

Webpack is a free and open-source module bundler for JavaScript. It is made primarily for JavaScript, but it can transform front-end assets such as HTML, CSS, and images if the corresponding loaders are included. Webpack takes modules with dependencies and generates static assets representing those modules.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vue.js</span> Open-source JavaScript library for building user interfaces

Vue.js is an open-source model–view–viewmodel front end JavaScript framework for building user interfaces and single-page applications. It was created by Evan You and is maintained by him and the rest of the active core team members.

gulp is an open-source JavaScript toolkit, used as a streaming build system in front-end web development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Babel (transcompiler)</span> Backwards compatible JavaScript compiler

Babel is a free and open-source JavaScript transcompiler that is mainly used to convert ECMAScript 2015+ (ES6+) code into backwards-compatible JavaScript code that can be run by older JavaScript engines. It allows web developers to take advantage of the newest features of the language.

Next.js is an open-source web development framework created by the private company Vercel providing React-based web applications with server-side rendering and static website generation.

References

  1. ↑ "Release 8.4.47". 14 September 2024. Retrieved 24 September 2024.
  2. ↑ "postcss/LICENSE at main · postcss/postcss". GitHub. 2013-09-24. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  3. ↑ Bracey, Kezz (2015-09-23). "PostCSS Deep Dive: What You Need to Know". Envato Tuts+. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  4. ↑ Sitnik, Andrey (2014-12-13). "Add Evil Martians badge · postcss/postcss@513f9c1". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  5. ↑ uMaxmaxmaximus; Sitnik, Andrey (2016-08-04). "Why we need PostCSS if we have Webpack o_O? · Issue #861 · postcss/postcss". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  6. ↑ Bracey, Kezz (2015-10-21). "PostCSS Deep Dive: Preprocessing with "PreCSS"". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  7. ↑ Sitnik, Andrey (2015-06-24). Andrey Sitnik - PostCSS: The Future After Sass and LESS - YouTube. YouTube (Videotape). BocoupLLC. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  8. ↑ webpack-contrib (2014-10-03). "webpack-contrib/postcss-loader: PostCSS loader for webpack". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  9. ↑ Kuzmin, Andrey (2014-08-17). "postcss/gulp-postcss: Pipe CSS through PostCSS processors with a single parse". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  10. ↑ Nikitenko, Dmitry (2014-09-25). "nDmitry/grunt-postcss: Apply several post-processors to your CSS using PostCSS". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  11. ↑ Krzeminski, Damian; Zimmerman, Ryan; Ciniawsky, Michael (2015-03-11). "postcss/postcss-cli: CLI for postcss". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  12. ↑ Niemelä, Matias (2016-09-23). "Running postcss in the browser · Issue #830 · postcss/postcss". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  13. ↑ Powell, Andrew (2016-01-26). "shellscape/postcss-less: PostCSS Syntax for parsing LESS". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  14. ↑ Sitnik, Andrew (2015-08-09). "postcss/postcss-scss: SCSS parser for PostCSS". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  15. ↑ Sitnik, Andrew (2016-01-04). "postcss/sugarss: Indent-based CSS syntax for PostCSS". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-20.
  16. ↑ "postcss/autoprefixer: Parse CSS and add vendor prefixes to rules by Can I Use". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  17. ↑ "css-modules/css-modules: Documentation about css-modules". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  18. ↑ "css-loader/package.json at 5a003e00645d2ed0b3e759db06f58a08fbdd6745 · webpack-contrib/css-loader". GitHub. 2016-08-15. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  19. ↑ "stylelint/stylelint". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  20. ↑ "morishitter/stylefmt: stylefmt is a tool that automatically formats stylesheets". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  21. ↑ "jonathantneal/precss: Use Sass-like markup in your CSS". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  22. ↑ "csstools/postcss-preset-env: Convert modern CSS into something browsers understand". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  23. ↑ "cssnano/cssnano: A modular minifier, built on top of the PostCSS ecosystem". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  24. ↑ "MohammadYounes/rtlcss: Framework for transforming Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) from Left-To-Right (LTR) to Right-To-Left (RTL)". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  25. ↑ "borodean/postcss-assets: An asset manager for PostCSS". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  26. ↑ "TrySound/postcss-inline-svg: PostCSS plugin to reference an SVG file and control its attributes with CSS syntax". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  27. ↑ "2createStudio/postcss-sprites: Generate sprites from stylesheets". GitHub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  28. ↑ Holowaychuk, TJ (2012-09-01). "Initial commit · reworkcss/rework@0a7be25". GitHub. Retrieved 2019-07-21.
  29. ↑ Holowaychuk, TJ (2013-02-28). "Modular CSS preprocessing with rework - TJ Holowaychuk". Tumblr. Archived from the original on 2014-09-18. Retrieved 2014-09-18.
  30. ↑ Sitnik, Andrey (2013-03-14). "Initial commit · postcss/autoprefixer@d36346e". GitHub. Retrieved 2019-07-21.
  31. ↑ Sitnik, Andrey (2013-03-28). "Rename project to autoprefixer · postcss/autoprefixer@419a77d". GitHub. Retrieved 2019-07-21.
  32. ↑ Gallagher, Nicolas (2014-06-04). "Facilitate autoprefixer needs · Issue #20 · reworkcss/css". GitHub. Retrieved 2019-07-21.
  33. ↑ Sitnik, Andrey (2013-09-07). "Init project · postcss/postcss@2d96cea". GitHub. Retrieved 2019-07-21.
  34. ↑ Sitnik, Andrey (2015-09-07). "PostCSS Second Birthday — Martian Chronicles, Evil Martians' team blog". Martian Chronicles, Evil Martians’ team blog. Retrieved 2019-07-21.
  35. ↑ Rob, Wierzbowski (2013-12-14). "Initial commit · robwierzbowski/grunt-pixrem@0f7b662". GitHub. Retrieved 2019-07-21.
  36. ↑ [Sitnik, Andrey (2013-12-21). "Release 1.0 "Plus ultra" · postcss/autoprefixer". GitHub. Retrieved 2019-07-20.
  37. ↑ Tisäter, Marcus (2015-12-31). "Mockup · Issue #4 · postcss/postcss.org". GitHub . Retrieved 2019-07-21.
  38. ↑ @PostCSS (2015-08-14). "PostCSS logo is a alchemy sign of philosopher's stone, which can transform metals to gold" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  39. ↑ @Autoprefixer (2013-12-17). "Every PostCSS version code name is taken from demons list in alchemy book "Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis"" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  40. ↑ Marohnić, Matija (2014-09-07). "CSS pre- vs. post-processing | Silvenon's Blog". Silvenon's Blog. Archived from the original on 2017-11-09. Retrieved 2017-11-09.
  41. ↑ The Trouble With Preprocessing Based on Future Specs
  42. ↑ @PostCSS (2015-07-28). "It is time admit my mistakes. "Postprocessor" term was bad. PostCSS team stopped to use it" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.