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 9. Working with Shortcuts, Fallbacks, and Packs

If you spend any time working with CSS, then it is likely you will come across instances where you wished there was a quicker way to add a particular block of code to your page, apply vendor prefixes, or perhaps set a predefined border to an element on the page.

We can easily achieve this by using one or more of the many shortcuts, fallbacks, or pack plugins available for use with PostCSS. In this chapter, we'll explore some common scenarios where plugins are required, before learning how to create them in the next chapter. We will cover a number of topics throughout this chapter, which will include the following:

  • Exploring some of the PostCSS shortcuts and packs available for use
  • Using plugins to lint and optimize your CSS code
  • Supplementing the existing shortcuts available in PostCSS
  • Applying fallbacks to PostCSS code to maintain support for older browsers

Let's get cracking!

Using shortcut plugins in PostCSS

Building a web-based application or site can be a lengthy process—there are so many elements to consider, and it takes time to create content that is engaging and informative.

Naturally, a smart designer or developer will always look for a shortcut to save time—after all, why take an hour to do something, if a shortcut will take half the time? The great thing about PostCSS is that it has a good selection of shortcut plugins that we can use; these include plugins such as the examples:

We've already incorporated or talked about a number of the shortcut plugins that are available within PostCSS—these include postcss-responsive-type which we used to build a responsive page earlier in the book, easings, and of course, postcss-transform-shortcut from Chapter 7, Animating Content.

There are a lot more plugins available for use. Throughout the course of this chapter, we're going to explore some of the shortcut plugins available, plus some of the packs that we can use to supplement functionality within our preprocessor. A good place to start is the selection of plugin packs available for use within PostCSS—let's take a moment to explore these in more detail.