I've spoken a couple times at meetups and conferences about Sass. After every talk I get the feeling that while everyone feels inspired about the technology they get back to their computer and don't know where to start. So for the next Function Pink we are going to have a Sass workshop. This meetup will be hands on and I will walk you through how to actually use Sass in your projects. No prior Sass experience is necessary.
For this workshop you will need a laptop, a text editor of your choice and Sass installed. So how do you get Sass installed? If you have a shiny new Mac then it's as simple as opening up the terminal and typing "sudo gem install sass". If you have an older Mac chances are you need a Ruby upgrade. Sass needs Ruby 1.8.7 to run. Upgrading Ruby can be a pain but I've had luck with RVM (http://beginrescueend.com/rvm/install/). If you are on a PC you can get Ruby with RubyInstaller for Windows (http://rubyinstaller.org/). I'll try to get my hands on a bunch of power strips for the meetup but if you can come with your laptop fully charged it will help.
Hopefully you can get Sass up and running. If you type "sass --version" into the terminal and get a response of 3.1.15 (Brainy Betty) then you are all set. Unfortunately I won't have time to troubleshoot installing Sass on your machine during the workshop. If you have trouble and Google can't save you shoot me an email and I'll try my best to help you get up and running.
Remember that Sass is only as good as your CSS knowledge. Sass doesn't make CSS do anything it can't already do, it just makes it easier to write. If you are a CSS beginner it would serve you well to know how to write CSS natively before diving into Sass. I'm not trying to scare people off, just trying to make sure you don't end up confused, scared and jaded with Sass.
This workshop is going to be a lot of fun and I have a bunch of awesome features to show you. I'm hoping that you will leave the workshop with the confidence to start integrating Sass into your normal workflow. It's a fantastic tool and has become a critical piece of my front end development strategy. If you have any questions please let me know. Thanks and see you April 5th!
April 7, 2012
Excellent meetup. Well planned session with a lot of covered in 2 hours. Great session Les.
April 6, 2012
A solid introduction to Sass, its key benefits and (surprising) depth, and best practices.
April 6, 2012
Helping to make Function Pink the best web development meetup in town.
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Good review of the basics, and I got a better grasp on the best practices for when to use mixins vs. @extend. Next time Capstrat hosts a workshop though we need to think about A/C in that room! I could BARELY drink beers fast enough to keep cool.