What is SASS?

What is SASS? #

SASS is a scripting language that provides us with features and tools that regular CSS doesn’t have.

Using SASS we can write more readable, maintainable and reusable code. Think of it as an extension that adds power and elegance to CSS.

It gives us various features such as:

• Variables
• Nesting
• Mixins
• Functions
• Partials & Imports
• Inheritance (Extend functionality)
• Control directives

In other words, SASS helps us organize large stylesheets in a more maintainable way.

And we’ll be looking into all of these features throughout this course!

SCSS or Sass? #

In SASS there are two different syntaxes: SCSS and Sass. However after being compiled they generate similar output.

SCSS (aka Sassy CSS) is the modern standard. It’s syntax is very similar to CSS in that it uses brackets and semicolons. Even normal CSS is valid in this syntax. The file extension is .scss.

Sass is an older syntax that focuses on indentation to separate code blocks and newline characters to separate rules. It has the file extension .sass.

Throughout this course, I will use SCSS as it’s the more natural syntax (when we use SCSS we still call it SASS!).

It’s also really easy to convert regular CSS to SCSS, as you can just paste in the CSS and work from there!

Note: To see how to install and configure SASS on a local machine, check out the lesson titled “How to Install and Configure SASS Locally” in the appendix.

Next up, let’s take a deep dive into the features of SASS!