PostCSS VS less.js

Compare PostCSS vs less.js and see what are their differences.

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PostCSS less.js
86 41
28,192 16,997
0.3% 0.1%
8.8 4.5
3 days ago about 1 month ago
TypeScript JavaScript
MIT License Apache License 2.0
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

PostCSS

Posts with mentions or reviews of PostCSS. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-01-11.
  • PostCSS - my initial experience
    3 projects | dev.to | 11 Jan 2024
    the plugins in the official PostCSS website were old like IE6 or the marquee tag, and
  • Dark Mode with SvelteKit, a Blog Post
    3 projects | /r/sveltejs | 15 Nov 2023
    Hello internet. I just published a new blog post on how to implement dark mode with SvelteKit, optionally with PostCSS and TailwindCSS:
  • 11 Ways to Optimize Your Website
    12 projects | dev.to | 12 Nov 2023
    There are many frontend tools available for this purpose. For example, PostCSS is a popular CSS processor that can combine and minimize your code. With the right plugin, it can even fix your code for compatibility issues, making sure your CSS styles work for all browsers.
  • Styling React 2023 edition
    11 projects | dev.to | 3 Nov 2023
    I use PostCSS to extend CSS’s features and to add a few things that make writing styles a little more convenient, but it could easily be swapped for another preprocessor like Sass or vanilla CSS. It’s up to you. You can view my PostCSS config here.
  • Abstract Syntax Trees and Practical Applications in JavaScript
    13 projects | dev.to | 21 Oct 2023
    Code transpilation isn't specific to JavaScript, You can also add a level of transformation to your CSS source using tools like post-css. Most languages with a fairly mature ecosystem will probably have some tools to help with code transformation.
  • Native CSS nesting now supported by all major browsers!
    1 project | dev.to | 29 Aug 2023
    In large projects, it is still a good idea to use PostCSS, which will translate new CSS features to something that browsers understand today.
  • Unicode-range CSS is working wrong in Safari browser?
    1 project | /r/reactjs | 27 Aug 2023
  • Let's Make Learning Frontend Great Again!
    11 projects | dev.to | 22 Aug 2023
    LiveCodes provides many of the commonly used developer tools. These include Monaco editor (that powers VS Code), Prettier, Emmet, Vim/Emacs modes, Babel, TypeScript, SCSS, Less, PostCSS, Jest and Testing Library, among others. All these tools run seamlessly in the browser without any installations or configurations. It feels like a very light-weight version of your own local development environment including the keyboard shortcuts, IntelliSense and code navigation features.
  • How to setup a simple static website using Svelte (with login)
    5 projects | dev.to | 19 May 2023
    Usually, one of the first things I do on creating a new web app is to throw a UI library in to help style components. There are several UI libraries that can be used by Svelte, but in this case I went with daisyUI because it's a fairly popular UI library which includes tailwind. To install daisyUI, you first need to install tailwind. There's a few different ways to do this (such as this guide), but the easiest way I've found is the following command, which also adds PostCSS and AutoPrefixer:
  • Vanilla+PostCSS as an Alternative to SCSS
    15 projects | dev.to | 30 Mar 2023
    Vanilla CSS has taken a similar path with ambitious working drafts, better browser support, and PostCSS to fill the gap for user agents lagging behind. So why is Sass/SCSS still so popular? Maybe we go so used to it that we might have forgotten what problems it was meant to solve in the first place.

less.js

Posts with mentions or reviews of less.js. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-03-25.
  • Creating Nx Workspace with Eslint, Prettier and Husky Configuration
    12 projects | dev.to | 25 Mar 2024
    LESS [ https://lesscss.org ]
  • Future of CSS: Functions and Mixins
    3 projects | dev.to | 15 Feb 2024
    Traditionally CSS lacked features such as variables, nesting, mixins, and functions. This was frustrating for Developers as it often led to CSS quickly becoming complex and cumbersome. In an attempt to make code easier and less repetitive CSS pre-processors were born. You would write CSS in the format the pre-processor understood and, at build time, you'd have some nice CSS. The most common pre-processors these days are Sass, Less, and Stylus. Any examples I give going forward will be about Sass as that's what I'm most familiar with.
  • Modern CSS for 2024: Nesting, Layers, and Container Queries
    3 projects | dev.to | 28 Dec 2023
    In the past, you’d need to rely on pre-processors such as SaSS or Less, but not anymore… Native CSS nesting has landed on all major modern browsers.
  • Maximize Web Performance with CSS Optimization Techniques
    3 projects | dev.to | 16 Oct 2023
    Consider using CSS preprocessors like Sass or Less not only for better code organization but also for potential performance improvements.
  • An Overview of 25+ UI Component Libraries in 2023
    40 projects | dev.to | 10 Sep 2023
    Extensions of CSS: for example, Sass, Less, Tailwind, CSS Modules, to make stuff look a certain way on your own.
  • Let's Make Learning Frontend Great Again!
    11 projects | dev.to | 22 Aug 2023
    LiveCodes provides many of the commonly used developer tools. These include Monaco editor (that powers VS Code), Prettier, Emmet, Vim/Emacs modes, Babel, TypeScript, SCSS, Less, PostCSS, Jest and Testing Library, among others. All these tools run seamlessly in the browser without any installations or configurations. It feels like a very light-weight version of your own local development environment including the keyboard shortcuts, IntelliSense and code navigation features.
  • Why Use Sass?
    5 projects | dev.to | 29 Jul 2023
    LESS
  • CSS: The Good Parts
    2 projects | dev.to | 17 Jul 2023
    The CSS Working Group had been aware of the need for CSS variables since its inception in 1997. By the late 2000s, developers had created various workarounds like custom PHP scripts and preprocessors like Less and Sass to compensate for this deficiency.
  • GPT-4 is becoming too real.
    2 projects | /r/ProgrammerHumor | 26 May 2023
    He could do with LESS
  • Vanilla+PostCSS as an Alternative to SCSS
    15 projects | dev.to | 30 Mar 2023
    While we may disagree whether Sass is still relevant today, Mayank's case for using Sass in 2022 sums up the many use cases for Sass/SCSS including a timeline from 2006 (Sass) to "2022+" (nesting). Nesting CSS used to one of the few good reasons left to choose Sass, SCSS (or less) in a new web project.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing PostCSS and less.js you can also consider the following projects:

styled-components - Visual primitives for the component age. Use the best bits of ES6 and CSS to style your apps without stress 💅

JSS - JSS is an authoring tool for CSS which uses JavaScript as a host language.

emotion - 👩‍🎤 CSS-in-JS library designed for high performance style composition

Tailwind CSS - A utility-first CSS framework for rapid UI development.

esbuild - An extremely fast bundler for the web

Sass - Sass makes CSS fun!

Senpwai - A desktop app for tracking and batch downloading anime

purgecss - Remove unused CSS

css-loader - CSS Loader

css-modules - Documentation about css-modules