Table of Contents for
Mastering PostCSS for Web Design

Version ebook / Retour

Cover image for bash Cookbook, 2nd Edition Mastering PostCSS for Web Design by Alex Libby Published by Packt Publishing, 2016
  1. Cover
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Mastering PostCSS for Web Design
  4. Mastering PostCSS for Web Design
  5. Credits
  6. About the Author
  7. About the Reviewer
  8. www.PacktPub.com
  9. Preface
  10. What you need for this book
  11. Who this book is for
  12. Conventions
  13. Reader feedback
  14. Customer support
  15. 1. Introducing PostCSS
  16. Introducing PostCSS
  17. Setting up a development environment
  18. Creating a simple example using PostCSS
  19. Linting code using plugins
  20. Exploring how PostCSS works
  21. Summary
  22. 2. Creating Variables and Mixins
  23. Creating a hover effect example
  24. Transitioning to using PostCSS
  25. Adding variable support to PostCSS
  26. Updating our hover effect demo
  27. Setting the order of plugins
  28. Creating mixins with PostCSS
  29. Looping content with PostCSS
  30. Summary
  31. 3. Nesting Rules
  32. Navigating through pages
  33. Transitioning to using PostCSS plugins
  34. Exploring the pitfalls of nesting
  35. Making the switch to BEM
  36. Exploring our changes in more detail
  37. Summary
  38. 4. Building Media Queries
  39. Exploring custom media queries in PostCSS
  40. Making images responsive
  41. Adding responsive text support
  42. Optimizing media queries
  43. Retrofitting support for older browsers
  44. Moving away from responsive design
  45. Taking things further with CSS4
  46. Summary
  47. 5. Managing Colors, Images, and Fonts
  48. Managing fonts with PostCSS
  49. Creating image sprites
  50. Working with SVG in PostCSS
  51. Adding support for WebP images
  52. Manipulating colors and color palettes
  53. Creating color functions with PostCSS
  54. Summary
  55. 6. Creating Grids
  56. Creating an example with Bourbon Neat
  57. Exploring the grid plugins in PostCSS
  58. Transitioning to using PostCSS-Neat
  59. Creating a site using Neat and PostCSS
  60. Adding responsive capabilities
  61. Summary
  62. 7. Animating Elements
  63. Moving away from jQuery
  64. Making use of pre-built libraries
  65. Switching to using SASS
  66. Making the switch to PostCSS
  67. Exploring plugin options within PostCSS
  68. Updating code to use PostCSS
  69. Creating a demo in PostCSS
  70. Optimizing our animations
  71. Using our own animation plugin
  72. Summary
  73. 8. Creating PostCSS Plugins
  74. Dissecting the architecture of a standard plugin
  75. Creating an transition plugin
  76. Building a custom font plugin
  77. Simplifying the development process
  78. Guidelines for plugin building
  79. Making the plugin available for use
  80. Summary
  81. 9. Working with Shortcuts, Fallbacks, and Packs
  82. Exploring plugin packs for PostCSS
  83. Adding shortcuts with Rucksack
  84. Linting and optimizing your code
  85. Providing fallback support
  86. Summary
  87. 10. Building a Custom Processor
  88. Exploring our processor
  89. Dissecting issues with our processor
  90. Optimizing the output
  91. Adding reload capabilities
  92. Extending our processor further
  93. Testing the final pre-processor
  94. Getting started with some hints and tips
  95. Introducing the CSStyle library
  96. Summary
  97. 11. Manipulating Custom Syntaxes
  98. Preparing our environment
  99. Implementing custom syntax plugins
  100. Parsing CSS
  101. Formatting the output with the API
  102. Highlighting our syntax code
  103. Summary
  104. 12. Mixing Preprocessors
  105. Exploring the conversion process
  106. Introducing the Pleeease library
  107. Compiling with other preprocessors
  108. Using the PreCSS library
  109. Converting a WordPress installation
  110. Setting up our environment
  111. Considering the conversion process
  112. Making changes to our code
  113. Compiling and testing the changes
  114. Summary
  115. 13. Troubleshooting PostCSS Issues
  116. Exploring some common issues
  117. Getting help from others
  118. Summary
  119. 14. Preparing for the Future
  120. Converting CSS4 styles for use
  121. Supporting future syntax with cssnext
  122. Creating plugins to provide extra CSS4 support
  123. Summary
  124. Index

Chapter 8. Creating PostCSS Plugins

Plugins, plugins…we can't escape them; by now, you will have seen that they are an essential part of developing within PostCSS. Its modular nature is built entirely around plugins, and is how we can streamline our processing through selective use of these plugins.

In this chapter, we'll cover the anatomy of a PostCSS plugin and take a look at some pre-built examples, before embarking on the construction of a simple plugin that we can then test and submit for inclusion in the PostCSS system.

We will cover a number of topics throughout this chapter, which will include the following:

  • Discovering how plugins can be used to extend PostCSS
  • Examining the architecture of a standard plugin
  • Creating a PostCSS plugin using the plugin boilerplate
  • Building some example plugins
  • Testing and submitting your plugin for inclusion in the PostCSS plugin library
  • Exploring some examples of existing plugins available for PostCSS

Let's make a start…!

Extending PostCSS with plugins

A question, how many times have you worked with plugins that by themselves don't actually achieve anything?

I'll bet the answer won't be a high figure—and no, I'm not including those plugins that claim to perform an operation, yet don't seem to work for some reason! The power of PostCSS lies not in the core system, but the plugins that we use to manipulate our CSS style sheets.

At the time of writing, there are more than 200 plugins available for use within PostCSS—these range from extending PostCSS (such as postcss-nested or postcss-mixins), to manipulating colors (such as postcss-color-hcl or postcss-rgba-hex), to plugins that cater for future CSS syntax (such as adding @extend support).

Note

The full list is available at https://github.com/postcss/postcss/blob/master/docs/plugins.md, or via the searchable catalogue hosted at http://www.postcss.parts.

To date, we've used a fair number of plugins throughout our examples—we've configured them for use, but there is still an element of black box about them, where we don't always know how the insides work. It's time to change that. As a first step, let's briefly meet the toolset that helps make plugins possible, the PostCSS API.

Any plugin created for PostCSS will have been constructed using the API. The key to this API will be the Node and Container methods, which can be used to manipulate content once the postcss object has been initialized in the plugin. We will explore these in more detail throughout this chapter, but before doing so, it makes sense to explore the architecture of a PostCSS plugin first, so let's have a look and see what makes one tick.