Visual Studio Code has built-in support for editing style sheets in CSS .css
, SCSS .scss
and Less .less
. In addition, you can install an extension for greater functionality.
Tip: Click on an extension tile above to read the description and reviews to decide which extension is best for you. See more in the Marketplace. VS Code has support for selectors, properties and values. Use ⌃Space (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Space) to get a list of context specific options. Proposals contain extensive documentation, including a list of browsers that support the. What is SCSS SCSS simply means Sassy CSS. Sassy CSS is a CSS preprocessor that gives you access to use features that are not available in Vanilla(normal) CSS. In this article I will list, explain and give Examples of some of those features. Variables In SCSS you can declare variables easily. Cheat Sheet; More developer tools: Emmet LiveStyle Real-time bi-directional edit tool for CSS, LESS and SCSS. Emmet Re:view Fast and easy way to test responsive. If you always feel you have to look up CSS terms, checkout this cheatsheet! It will make your CSS life easier. I applied some if this tricks while I was building Museo, a Vanilla CSS/SCSS Landing. Download CSS Cheat Sheet PDF. With that comes to an end of the CSS cheat sheet. This you way can brush up your skills while you are creating a website or preparing for CSS interview. You may also want to read types of CSS and difference between CSS, CSS2, CSS3 to understand CSS better. You can live up your webpage with the CSS.
Tip: Click on an extension tile above to read the description and reviews to decide which extension is best for you. See more in the Marketplace.
VS Code has support for selectors, properties and values. Use ⌃Space (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Space) to get a list of context specific options.
Proposals contain extensive documentation, including a list of browsers that support the property. To see the full description text of the selected entry, use ⌃Space (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Space).
As you type, there is syntax highlighting as well as in context preview of colors.
Clicking on a color preview will launch the integrated color picker which supports configuration of hue, saturation and opacity.
Tip: You can trigger between different color modes by clicking on the color string at the top of the picker.
You can hide VS Code's color previews by setting the following setting:
To just disable it for css, Less and SCSS, use
You can fold regions of source code using the folding icons on the gutter between line numbers and line start. Folding regions are available for all declarations (for example, rule declarations) and for multiline comments in the source code.
Additionally you can use the following region markers to define a folding region: /*#region*/
and /*#endregion*/
in CSS/SCSS/Less or // #region
and // #endregion
In SCSS/Less.
If you prefer to switch to indentation based folding for CSS, Less and SCSS, use:
Emmet abbreviation support is built into VS Code, suggestions are listed along with other suggestions and snippets in the editor auto-completion list.
Tip: See the CSS section of the Emmet cheat sheet for valid abbreviations.
VS Code also supports User Defined Snippets.
There is support for CSS version <= 2.1, Sass version <= 3.2 and Less version <= 2.3.
Note: You can disable VS Code's default CSS, Sass or Less validation by setting the corresponding .validate
User or Workspace setting to false.
You can quickly navigate to the relevant CSS symbol in the current file by pressing ⇧⌘O (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+O).
Hovering over a selector or property will provide an HTML snippet that is matched by the CSS rule.
This is supported for Sass and Less variables in the same file. CSS variables per the draft standards proposal are also supported.
There is jump to definition for @import
and url()
links in CSS, SCSS and Less.
You can extend VS Code's CSS support through a declarative custom data format. By setting css.customData
to a list of JSON files following the custom data format, you can enhance VS Code's understanding of new CSS properties, at-directives, pseudo-classes and pesudo-elements. VS Code will then offer language support such as completion & hover information for the provided properties, at-directives, pseudo-classes and pesudo-elements.
You can read more about using custom data in the vscode-custom-data repository.
VS Code can integrate with Sass and Less transpilers through our integrated task runner. We can use this to transpile .scss
or .less
files into .css
files. Let's walk through transpiling a simple Sass/Less file.
For this walkthrough, let's use either the node-sass or less Node.js module.
Note: If you don't have Node.js and the npm package manager already installed, you'll need to do so for this walkthrough. Install Node.js for your platform. The Node Package Manager (npm) is included in the Node.js distribution. You'll need to open a new terminal (command prompt) for npm
to be on your PATH.
Open VS Code on an empty folder and create a styles.scss
or styles.less
file. Place the following code in that file:
For the Less version of the above file, just change $padding
to @padding
.
Note: This is a very simple example, which is why the source code is almost identical between both file types. In more advanced scenarios, the syntaxes and constructs will be much different.
The next step is to set up the task configuration. To do this, run Terminal > Configure Tasks and click Create tasks.json file from templates. In the selection dialog that shows up, select Others.
This will create a sample tasks.json
file in the workspace .vscode
folder. The initial version of file has an example to run an arbitrary command. We will modify that configuration for transpiling Sass/Less instead:
As this is the only command in the file, you can execute it by pressing ⇧⌘B (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+B) (Run Build Task). The sample Sass/Less file should not have any compile problems, so by running the task all that happens is a corresponding styles.css
file is created.
Since in more complex environments there can be more than one build task we prompt you to pick the task to execute after pressing ⇧⌘B (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+B) (Run Build Task). In addition, we allow you to scan the output for compile problems (errors and warnings). Depending on the compiler, select an appropriate entry in the list to scan the tool output for errors and warnings. If you don't want to scan the output, select Never scan the build output from the presented list.
At this point, you should see an additional file show up in the file list styles.css
.
If you want to make the task the default build task to run execute Configure Default Build Task from the global Terminal menu and select the corresponding Sass or Less task from the presented list.
Note: If your build fails or you see an error message such as 'An output directory must be specified when compiling a directory', be sure the filenames in your tasks.json
match the filenames on disk. You can always test your build by running node-sass styles.scss styles.css
from the command line.
Let's take things a little further and automate Sass/Less compilation with VS Code. We can do so with the same task runner integration as before, but with a few modifications.
We will use Gulp to create a task that will automate Sass/Less compilation. We will also use the gulp-sass plug-in to make things a little easier. The Less plug-in is gulp-less.
We need to install gulp both globally (-g
switch) and locally:
Note:gulp-sass
and gulp-less
are Gulp plug-ins for the node-sass
and lessc
modules we were using before. There are many other Gulp Sass and Less plug-ins you can use, as well as plug-ins for Grunt.
You can test that your gulp installation was successful by typing gulp -v
. You should see a version displayed for both the global (CLI) and local installations.
Open VS Code on the same folder from before (contains styles.scss
/styles.less
and tasks.json
under the .vscode
folder), and create gulpfile.js
at the root.
Place the following code in the gulpfile.js
file:
What is happening here?
default
gulp task first runs the sass
or less
task once when it starts up.gulp-sass
, gulp-less
.To complete the tasks integration with VS Code, we will need to modify the task configuration from before to run the default Gulp task we just created. You can either delete the tasks.json
file or empty it only keeping the 'version': '2.0.0'
property. Now execute Run Task from the global Terminal menu. Observe that you are presented with a picker listing the tasks defined in the gulp file. Select gulp: default to start the task. We allow you to scan the output for compile problems. Depending on the compiler, select an appropriate entry in the list to scan the tool output for errors and warnings. If you don't want to scan the output, select Never scan the build output from the presented list. At this point, if you create and/or modify Less or SASS files, you see the respective CSS files generated and/or changes reflected on save. You can also enable Auto Save to make things even more streamlined.
If you want to make the gulp: default task the default build task executed when pressing ⇧⌘B (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+B) run Configure Default Build Task from the global Terminal menu and select gulp: default from the presented list.
The gulp: default task runs in the background and watches for file changes to Sass/Less files. If you want to stop the task, you can use the Terminate Task from the global Terminal menu.
You can configure the following lint warnings as User and Workspace Settings.
The validate
setting allows you turn off the built-in validation. You would do this if you rather use a different linter.
Id | Description | Default |
---|---|---|
css.validate | Enables or disables all css validations | true |
less.validate | Enables or disables all less validations | true |
scss.validate | Enables or disables all scss validations | true |
To configure an option for CSS, use css.lint.
as the prefix to the id; for SCSS and Less, use scss.lint.
and less.lint.
.
Set a setting to warning
or error
if you want to enable lint checking, use ignore
to disable it. Lint checks are performed as you type.
Id | Description | Default |
---|---|---|
validate | Enables or disables all validations | true |
compatibleVendorPrefixes | When using a property with a vendor-specific prefix (for example -webkit-transition ), make sure to also include all other vendor-specific properties e.g. -moz-transition , -ms-transition and -o-transition | ignore |
vendorPrefix | When using a property with a vendor-specific prefix for example -webkit-transition , make sure to also include the standard property if it exists e.g. transition | warning |
duplicateProperties | Warn about duplicate properties in the same ruleset | ignore |
emptyRules | Warn about empty rulesets | warning |
importStatement | Warn about using an import statement as import statements are loaded sequentially which has a negative impact on web page performance | ignore |
boxModel | Do not use width or height when using padding or border | ignore |
universalSelector | Warn when using the universal selector * as it is known to be slow and should be avoided | ignore |
zeroUnits | Warn when having zero with a unit e.g. 0em as zero does not need a unit. | ignore |
fontFaceProperties | Warn when using @font-face rule without defining a src and font-family property | warning |
hexColorLength | Warn when using hex numbers that don't consist of three or six hex numbers | error |
argumentsInColorFunction | Warn when an invalid number of parameters in color functions e.g. rgb | error |
unknownProperties | Warn when using an unknown property | warning |
ieHack | Warn when using an IE hack *propertyName or _propertyName | ignore |
unknownVendorSpecificProperties | Warn when using an unknown vendor-specific property | ignore |
propertyIgnoredDueToDisplay | Warn when using a property that is ignored due to the display. For example, with display: inline , the width , height , margin-top , margin-bottom , and float properties have no effect. | warning |
important | Warn when using !important as it is an indication that the specificity of the entire CSS has gotten out of control and needs to be refactored. | ignore |
float | Warn when using float as floats lead to fragile CSS that is easy to break if one aspect of the layout changes. | ignore |
idSelector | Warn when using selectors for an id #id as selectors should not contain IDs because these rules are too tightly coupled with the HTML. | ignore |
Read on to find out about:
Yes, color picker has been added in version 1.15.
No, but there are several extensions in the Marketplace supporting the indented flavor of Sass, for example, the Sass extension originally created by Robin Bentley, now maintained by Leonard Grosoli.