Less - Editors and Plugins

In this chapter let's study about editors and plugins. Editor is a system or program which allows a user to edit text. Plugins are piece of software that is used to expand the functionality of the site.
Let's us discuss editors and IDEs for LESS.

S.N.	Editors and IDEs & Description
1	Crunch! It supports cross-platforms like Windows, Mac and Linux. It provides editor with integrated compiling.
2	Mindscape Web Workbench It provide CoffeeScript, SASS, Compass and LESS editing, it includes all the necessaries for making modern web development easy in Visual Studio.
3	NetBeans It is a Java-based IDE and it’s an open source. It lets you easily and quickly develop desktop, mobile and web applications as well as HTML5 applications with HTML, JavaScript and CSS.
4	TextMate It is a general purpose graphical text editor for Mac OS X. It features declarative customizations, recordable macros, snippets, shell integration, open documents tabs and an extensible bundle system.
5	Vim The vim bundle adds functionalities like indenting, highlighting and autocompletion for the dynamic stylesheet language LESS.
6	Emacs It contains less-css-model, which will provide an Emacs mode for LESS CSS (lesscss.org), complete with support for compile on save.
7	jetBrains WebStorm and PhpStorm WebStrom is a lightweight and powerful IDE. It is perfectly equipped for complex client-side and server development with Node.js. PhpStorm is most intelligent PHP IDE which supports deep code understanding, top-notch coding assistance and support for all major tools and frameworks.
8	Brackets It is a lightweight, powerful and an open source code editor for web designers and front-end developers.
9	CodeLobster It is a portable integrated development environment (IDE) primarily for PHP. It also supports HTML, CSS and JavaScript development and plugins are available for Drupal, WordPress, Smarty, Joomla, JQuery, Facebook, Codeigniter, Yii and CakePHP.
10	KineticWing IDE It is quick, clean, lightweight and portable IDE. It is a full-size development suite allowing you to work smarter and faster.
11	nodeMirror It is open source and can be easily customizable. It is an IDE utilizing CodeMirror.net, pty.js and other libraries.
12	HTML-Kit Tools It is full featured modern web editor for HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and more. It allows you to edit, preview, validate publish and manage projects from modern standards compliant editor.

Sublime Text 2 & 3

The sublime text different options for LESS as listed in below table:

S.N.	Options & Description
1	Less-sublime LESS syntax for sublime text provides syntax highlighting for .less files, along with snippets.
2	Sublime-Less-to-CSS Sublime text 2 and 3 plugin to compile .less files to CSS when you save. It requires lessc installed on PATH.
3	Less-build-sublime LESS build system for sublime text 2 which provides two build systems for LESS files, both minified and non-minified.
4	SublimeOnSaveBuild It is a simple plugin for sublime text 2 to trigger a build when you save each time. Works well with pre-processors like LESS, Compass and any others.

Eclipse

Eclipse different plugins for LESS as listed in below table:

S.N.	Plugins & Description
1	Eclipse Less Plugin By extending the Eclipse IDE, this plugin provides useful features to edit and compile LESS stylesheets.
2	Transpiler Plugin This is Eclipse plugin to automatically transpile your files like LESS, SASS, CoffeeScript, etc.

Visual Studio

Visual Studio different options for LESS as listed in below table:

S.N.	Options & Description
1	CSS Is Less This extension makes LESS files open with CSS language service.
2	Web Essentials 2012 This extension lets you perform common tasks much easier and adds useful features to Visual studio for web developers.
3	Web Essentials 2013 It extends Visual Studio with a lot of new features which are not specific to a specific language or editor.
4	Web Tools 2013 You download the tool and start developing with ASP.NET

Dreamweaver

Let's discuss some of the points about Dreamweaver.

• It is an Adobe application used by web designers and developers to create to creating applications and websites.
• It is capable of working across multiple targets including browsers, devices and tablets
• Web designers use Dreamweaver for creating website prototypes.
• DMXzone Less CSS Compiler makes all the LESS CSS powers directly in Dreamweaver.

Notepad++ 6.x

Let's discuss some of the points about Notepad++.

• Notepad++ is a free text editor and source code editor which supports tabbed editing i.e. working with multiple open files in a single window.
• LESS for Notepad++ is an xml file that provides you syntax highlighting or coloring for .less files. You can get more information on this link.
• Less.js Syntax highlighting is a user defined language by Raúl Salitrero and azrafe7.
• To install Notepad++ click this link.