UI/Theme Frameworks and Components

Grid Systems

Mixin Libraries

Editors and Editor Plugins

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Editors and IDEs

• Crunch 2! (built-in compiling, debugging, and searching across @imports)
• Mindscape Web Workbench (built-in support)
• NetBeans (built-in syntax highlighting)
• TextMate
• Vim
• Emacs
• jetBrains WebStorm and PhpStorm (built-in support)
• Brackets (built-in syntax highlighting, several extensions for compilation)
• CodeLobster (built-in syntax highlighting)
• KineticWing IDE (built-in support)
• nodeMirror (built-in support, built-in HTML/CSS/Less preview)
• HTML-Kit Tools (built-in support)
• Dreamweaver CC (built-in support)

Sublime Text 2 & 3

• Less-sublime
• Sublime-Less-to-CSS
• Less-build-sublime
• SublimeOnSaveBuild

Eclipse

• Eclipse Less Plugin by Vincent Simonet
• Transpiler Plugin by Thomas Gossmann

Komodo Edit/IDE

• Komodo Less Compiler by Bob de Haas

Visual Studio

• CSS Is Less (Visual Studio)
• Web Essentials 2012 (Visual Studio 2012)
• Web Essentials 2013 (Visual Studio 2013)
• Web Tools 2013 (Visual Studio)

Dreamweaver

• DMXzone Less CSS Compiler

Notepad++ 6.x

• Less.js Syntax Highlighting User Defined Language by Raúl Salitrero
• Less.js Syntax Highlighting User Defined Language by azrafe7
• How to Install

Browser extensions

• Live editor for CSS and LESS – Magic CSS

Less.js Plugins

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Available Less plugins. Find more at GitHub and NPM Registry

Postprocessor/Feature Plugins

Preprocessors

Import Plugins

Function Libraries

Framework Importers

Edit the markdown source for “guis-for-less” Tip: try out the different Less tools available for your platform to see which one meets your needs.

This page focuses on GUI compilers. For command line usage and tools see Command Line Usage.

Cross platform

Crunch 2!

The editor and compiler for awesome people.

Crunch 2 is a cross-platform (Windows, Mac, and Linux) editor with integrated compiling. If you work with large Less projects, you should definitely try it out, as you only need the free version for Less files. Available at: https://getcrunch.co/.

SimpLESS

SimpLess is a minimalistic Less compiler. Just drag, drop and compile.

One of the unique features of SimpLess is that it supports ‘prefixing’ your CSS by using http://prefixr.com.. SimpLess is built on the Titanium platform. Get more info: http://wearekiss.com/simpless

Koala

Koala is a cross-platform GUI application for compiling less, sass and coffeescript.

Features: cross platform, compile error notification supports and compile options supports.

Get more info: http://koala-app.com/

Prepros

Prepros is a tool to compile Less, Sass, Compass, Stylus, Jade and much more.

Get more info at https://prepros.io/

Specific platforms

Windows

WinLess

WinLess started out as a clone of Less.app, it takes a more feature-complete approach and has several settings. It also supports starting with command line arguments.

Get more info: http://winless.org

OS X

CodeKit

CodeKit is the successor to LESS.app, and supports Less among many other preprocessing languages, such as SASS, Jade, Markdown, and many more.

Get more info: http://incident57.com/codekit

LiveReload

CSS edits and image changes apply live. CoffeeScript, SASS, Less and others just work.

Get more info: http://livereload.com

Linux

Plessc

Plessc is a gui fronted made with PyQT.

Auto compile, log viewer, open the less file with the editor chosen, settings for compile the file. Get more info: https://github.com/Mte90/Plessc

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Online Web IDEs/Playgrounds with Less support

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Node.js Compilers

• grunt-contrib-less
• assemble-less: Full-featured Grunt.js plugin for compiling Less files to CSS, with additional options for maintaining libraries of Less components and themes. For advanced users, this plugin allows you to define and manage Less “packages” or “bundles” using JSON, Lo-dash(underscore) templates (e.g. <%= bootstrap.less %>), and node-glob / minimatch (e.g. '../src/**/*.less"). assemble-less also has a number of options including minifying CSS
• gulp-less: Please note that this plugin discards source-map options, opting to instead using the gulp-sourcemaps library.
• autoless: A Less files watcher, with dependency tracking (changes to imported files cause other files to be updated too) and growl notifications.
• Connect Middleware for Less: Connect Middleware for Less compiling

Other Technologies

Wro4j Runner CLI Download the wro4j-runner.jar file and run the following command:

java -jar wro4j-runner-1.5.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar --preProcessors lessCss

More details can be found here: Wro4j Runner CLI

CSS::LESSp

http://search.cpan.org/~drinchev/CSS-LESSp/

lessp.pl styles.less > styles.css

Windows Script Host

Note – the official Less node runs on windows, so we are not sure why you would use this.

Less.js for Windows with this usage:

cscript //nologo lessc.wsf input.less [output.css] [-compress]

or

lessc input.less [output.css] [-compress]

dotless

dotless for Windows can be run like this:

dotless.Compiler.exe [-switches] <inputfile> [outputfile]

Also see:

• Ports of Less

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Java

• Lesscss (Runs less.js using Rhino, Nasshorn or node.js engine; 1.7.0 compliant)
• Lesscss gradle plugin (Gradle plugin based on Lesscss)
• Less Engine (Runs less.js in the Rhino JVM-based JavaScript interpreter)
• Less CSS Compiler for Java (Runs less.js in the Rhino JVM-based JavaScript interpreter)
• Less4j (Native Java implementation.)
• JLessC (Less compiler written completely in Java)

.Net

• Less CSS for .Net
• BundleTransformer.Less

PHP

• lessphp
• BW Less CSS (WordPress Plugin)
• less.php
• ILess

Python

• Python Less Compiler

Ruby

• Less.js In Ruby’s V8 Engine

Go

• Less.js In Go (Runs less.js inside embedded Javascript engine)

Know of another port that should be added to this list? Please let us know.