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CSS Post-Processing With Pleeease

Pre-processors such as Sass, Less, and Stylus have revolutionized CSS development. If you’re a pre-processor skeptic like I was, try using Sass for a project or two: you won’t ever return to raw CSS again. Despite this attention, developers rarely consider post-processors. Pleeease could change that perception…

What’s a CSS Post-Processor?

A post-processor applies changes to a CSS file after it’s been hand-coded or generated by a pre-processor. A basic example is minification: your CSS file is parsed to remove white space, comments, and unnecessary dimensions, e.g. margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px; becomes margin:0;. The result is saved to a new, smaller file, e.g. styles.min.css.

Pleeease is a Node.js application that combines a selection of great post-processors into one handy command-line tool that works on any platform.

Command-line? No Thanks!

Don’t be afraid; Pleeease is not complicated to install or run. That said, if you cannot bear the thought of typing a few commands, try the Pleeease online playground; you won’t get all the benefits but you can test the system using cut-and-paste.

Installing Pleeease

First, install Node.js from nodejs.org. You can download installers for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux or use a package manager.

Next, open a command-line/terminal window and enter the following command on Windows:

[code language=”bash”] npm install -g pleeease
[/code]

or, on Mac/Linux:

[code language=”bash”] sudo npm install -g pleeease
[/code]

Note the unique spelling of “pleeease”, which has four e’s with three in the middle.

Using Pleeease

From the command line you now need to navigate using the cd command to a web project folder where your CSS files reside. Assuming you have a folder named ‘myprojectstyles’ in the Windows C: drive, you’d enter:

[code language=”bash”] c:
cd myprojectstyles
[/code]

or, on Mac/Linux, if you have a ‘myproject/styles’ folder in your home folder, you’d enter:

[code language=”bash”] cd ~/myproject/styles
[/code]

Normally the prompt will change to show which folder you’re in. To run Pleeease, now enter:

[code language=”bash”] pleeease compile
[/code]

By default, Pleeease will join all the CSS files into one and create a new app.min.css file in the same folder. Open that file in an editor to see what has been done.

Continue reading %CSS Post-Processing With Pleeease%

Tablets: Quest For The Enterprise

Tablet Market Tiers

Yesterday, Apple announced a minor refresh to their iPad portfolio, with improvements mostly focused on Touch ID and a thinner footprint. In many ways, this did feel like this was a “placeholder” upgrade. The new iPads would certainly appeal to loyalists, but they don’t seem to target the primary reasons behind the recent slowdown.

The slowdown in iPad sales (or high-end tablet sales, in general) was caused by three factors — 1) Increasing overlap in use cases of large screen smartphones (or phablets) and tablets, 2) Inability to move downmarket, despite lower iPad Mini prices, because of competitive reasons highlighted in the chart above, and 3) Limited upmarket mobility because of a lack of developer focus around productivity.

With the release of the iPhone 6 Plus, the first factor really plays into Apple’s hands. If you have to cannibalize your own products, doing it with a higher margin product is the most painless way to go. The second factor is a market reality and there is little Apple or any other company can do about it. This leaves an upmarket move as the last remaining option to boost tablet sales. While Apple’s IBM deal could help here, that is only a small part of the solution.

In the enterprise, tablet use is still restricted to highly specialized use cases — executives use them to take down notes, check email, etc. and sales staff in the field use them on the go. The primary issue is that developer innovation focused on tablet productivity has been minimal so far. Developers are partially to blame here because smartphones seemed like the more lucrative market. But OEMs and platform owners have to share some of the blame as well.

Of all the tablets and platforms released so far, only  the Surface Pro seemed to target productivity. Unfortunately, Microsoft made major sacrifices in ease of use and pricing to get there. Combined with their ecosystem handicap, this created a compromised tablet and PC experience. On the other hand, Google seems to have taken a step in the right direction with the Nexus 9’s keyboard cover. While the Nexus 9 is unlikely to see meaningful sales, it could have a very “Nexus 7-like” impact. So far, tablets with keyboard attachments have remained a novelty. But if more OEMs go that route, it may finally pique developer interest in taking advantage of these accessories. In much the same way, I think Apple needs an iPad Pro to get developers to take an interest in productivity. In my opinion, this may be the only way to meaningfully increase tablet penetration in the enterprise.

This story was reposted with permission from tech-thoughts.

Sameer SinghSameer Singh is an M&A professional and business strategy consultant focusing on the mobile technology sector. He is founder and editor of tech-thoughts.net.

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