--- author: '' category: '' date: 2013/08/31 14:46:38 description: CSS is hard, let's use LESS of it. link: '' priority: '' slug: new-in-nikola-v6-part-v-less-is-more tags: python, nikola title: 'New in Nikola v6 part V: LESS is more' type: text updated: 2013/08/31 14:46:38 url_type: '' --- I am planning to do a major release (version 6!) of `Nikola `_ my static blog and site generator the next weekend. It's a major version because there has been *a ton* of feature work done. So, I will do a quick series highlighting some of those improvements this week. Today's Topic: LESS ------------------- Unless you are happy with your site looking like straight bootstrap (and you really should not) CSS goes a long way towards making your pages look just the way you want them to. The bad part is that, if you have done any CSS you will know CSS is a really, really crappy "language". That's why a whole philum of tools has been created that take a more powerful syntax and output CSS. Nikola now has support for one of these, called `LESS `_ (although adding support for others like SASS should be very easy). So, how does it work? 1) In your theme, put LESS files in the ``less/`` folder. 2) Create ``less/targets`` and put there the files that should be compiled using ``lessc``, one per line. 3) There is no step 3 Nikola will automatically build ``output/assets/css/foo.css`` out of ``theme/foo/less/foo.less`` and will even support the usual theme inheritance, so if there ever is a LESS-based theme out there, you can just tweaks the files you want. I personally am not writing that hypothetical LESS-based theme, but I am more than ready to help whoever wants to do one.