Adding reload capabilities

Adding a reload capability reduces the amount of time spent manually reloading our pages after a code change; the latter can be a real pain, especially when working with complex CSS styles!

The downside to this is that it only works in Chrome—if this isn't an issue, then these are the steps you would need to follow to make this work:

We'll start by extracting copies of the gulpfile.js and package.json files from the T53 – adding livereload capabilities folder, from the code download that accompanies this book. Save both copies to the root of our project area.
From the same T53 – adding livereload capabilities folder, extract and save a copy of the style.css file from the src folder within, to the src folder at the root of our project area.
Fire up a Node.js command prompt, then change the working folder to our project area.
In the prompt, enter npm install gulp-livereload –save-dev and press Enter—let this install.
Download and install the Chrome applet for LiveReload from http://bit.ly/IKI2MY.
Add this line at the end of the sourcemap task:
```
.pipe(plugins.livereload());
```
Remove the semi-colon at the end of line 60.
Add this line to our watch task:
```
plugins.livereload.listen();
```
Our task file will look like this, with the changes made at lines 61 and 68:

At this point, we can test to ensure it works by making a change to our style sheet—if all is well, Gulp will kick in and recompile our code; if we have a site open in a browser that we're developing, then this would be automatically reloaded by the plugin.

Note

For those of you interested in using this plugin in more detail, please refer to the documentation available on the GitHub site at https://github.com/vohof/gulp-livereload. There is a full version of the code used in this example, within the T53 - adding livereload capabilities folder in the code download that accompanies this book.

Right, onwards we go! We're almost at the end of our journey through the art of the possible; before we move onto testing our processor, I thought I would leave you with a few more ideas that you may like to consider using in your processors. All of them should install using the same process that we've seen throughout this book.

Previous Chapter

Optimizing the output

Next Chapter

Extending our processor further

Table of Contents for Mastering PostCSS for Web Design

Adding reload capabilities

Note

Table of Contents for
Mastering PostCSS for Web Design