Add SASS support

Very basic implimentation has been made in 7.x-3.x, but we still need to develop the mixins and variables that could be useful, and convert the actual CSS files, they are all there as .scss (set compass to watch the /scss/ folder and it will overwrite all CSS files in /css/).

I need to re-write all the .scss files, and need some help and input on this etc.

In the most recent update to 7.x-3.x I removed most of the current .scss files except for base and partials, I am doing a bit of file restructuring and will reinstate a full compliment of scss files once this is fully thought out and implemented.

After some long hard thinking I settled on following Zens lead with regards to CSS structure, its not identical but much the same, which is almost the same as it always has been... lol, so after going around in circles I have returned to the idea that modular stylesheets really do make sense (we have to test these notion, even after years of real life work, its worth exploring new ideas).

What I have done is poached Zens CSS and modified it to suit AT. Mostly this means removing bits, adding bits and changing some bits (bits = files, selectors and styles). The upshot is that I can use Zens scss files with the same rather minimal modifications, thats a big win and will get us SASS integration sooner rather than later.

Its cool, but not really what I am driving at - the theme has all-powerful layout capability built in so I am more wanting to focus on style/design for SASS and leave the layout heavy lifting up to theme settings.

So mixins for style, regularly used stuff and setting variables for reuse, that sort of thing, but most of all just getting a really good CSS structure in place - which is why I went back to my original modular type structure and pinched a lot out of Zen (mainly because that gives me a head start and lots of helpful documented CSS files to boot).

I have sort of left this for a while now, I have been working on other things in the theme, which I will reveal very shortly...

I'm going to make a commit later today, if you are interested please take a look at the CSS files and the structure, you will see I have the base and custom partials from Zen in the SASS directory and a modified config.rb file there also, the modular CSS needs converting to SASS, which is the big job, but its still being tweaked.

Oh yes, please do keep me up to date, sounds like an interesting project.

OK, I just pushed a MAJOR update to git.

Just a quick brain dump here:

I think the CSS structure and even the actual CSS is pretty much done from my point of view, I am really open to adjustments to the default CSS (the actual styles) that ship with the theme, in particular in the sub-theme, so I am really looking for help with doing this SASS conversion of those existing CSS files in the sub-theme to scss equivalents.

Probably a lot can be lifted strait out of Zen and tweaked, or start from scratch, not sure which will be faster, maybe from scratch might be less checking and be a smoother ride.

If someone still wants to grab this please be quick, I am champing at the bit to get a stable release out next week and working like a dog to make this happen.

An initial port to SASS has been committed.

We can all thank Barraponto for his awesome work on these files, thanks man, you rock!

OK, on deeper review there are a number of mistakes in the current SASS files and I want to reformat them to use a formatting style more inline with Drupal CSS coding conventions.

I've made commits over the past few days to clean these up, added in the @imports for the base and custom partials, its hard to know for sure how good they are without actually giving them a few site builds to see where they can be improved, so will mark this as fixed and probably commit small incremental improvements over the next few weeks. I'm doing a custom theme build right now and everything is going very smoothly on 7.x-3.x, the SASS integration is a huge win and the new settings are making life real easy in many regards.

Hey, hows it, I missed all this because the issue is set to closed, make em active if you update an issue so it pops up on my radar.

Ops

If you look AT already has quite a few things that are in normalize, although I have not done a full audit some things are quite similar and share a lot of commonality. I do not like the look of the form resets in normalize, for that reason alone I would not touch it.

I tend to take a very pragmatic approach to these things, I know what works for Drupal and will stick to working software rather than include something that I know is not well tested in Drupal.

I have not tested with Sassy module, it would be good to have some feedback if you are using it, that everything is working just fine or not, as the case may be. I use Ruby and Compass, so that is what I have tested with. If its working fine with Sassy then I can include a link in the docs to that module, it could be useful to many people who don't want to use command line.

The theme already loads the HTML5 shiv, by default too, its in the "Settings" tab under Polyfills. PIE is great, I have used it a lot, very useful and something I should think abut including in the core theme, I need to recheck the licencing.

I use Ruby and Compass and find the compile time to be near instant, I mean its very fast. Most of the hard core front end people I know in Drupal are using Compass and Ruby. I gave the Sassy module a test but I couldn't get it to work, but I don't have much spare time to figure out what is wrong, its hard to get time to test these things.

Glad you appreciate the approach - I take a more simple approach in the UI, and leave the raw power hiding under the hood, which is easy to tap if you really need it.

I added Sassy reference to the README file and added a note about using scss syntax. I dont want to change the directory name, I can live with a minor naming convention issue, the tradeoff is many people know what SASS is and can visually identify it immediately, whereas SCSS is just less well known - I'm talking about those who have never used SASS, but maybe heard of it, for those who have used it and are experienced it makes little difference either way.