Better CSS in .NET?

Question

I'm getting slightly jealous of the innovation I'm seeing from the Python and Ruby community around CSS. For example, see:

1. http://sandbox.pocoo.org/clevercss/
2. http://lesscss.org/
3. http://haml.hamptoncatlin.com/docs/rdoc/classes/Sass.html

That said, my question is two fold. Could these library's be easily "ported" to .NET via IronRuby and IronPython so I could then write MSBUILD tasks or HTTP Handlers in C#?

Also, should I bother with this, or is someone else in the .NET community already working on this?

Answer 1

CSS Variables can be accomplished with HTTP Handlers.

http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2006/10/16/add-variables-to-standard-css-stylesheets-in-aspnet

I imagine a lot of the other useful features exist in some form, which are you interested in specifically?

Answer 2

It would be nice to port SASS to .NET, because it's such a nice tool and .NET is such a nice platform. But there's not really much need, because we can continue to use the Ruby tool as-is. You can very easily add a step to your build process which compiles SASS files into CSS files using the Ruby tool.

Here's mine.

#PostBuild.rb
#from http://sentia.com.au/2008/08/sassing-a-net-application.html
#Post-build event command line: rake -f "$(ProjectDir)PostBuild.rb"

require 'haml'
require 'sass'

task :default => [ :stylesheets ]

desc 'Regenerates all sass templates.'
task :stylesheets do
 wd = File.dirname(__FILE__)
 sass_root = File.join(wd, 'Stylesheets')
 css_root = File.join(wd, 'Content')
 Dir[sass_root + '/*.sass'].each do |sass|
  css = File.join(css_root, File.basename(sass, '.sass') + '.css')
  puts "Sassing #{sass} to #{css}."
  File.open(css, 'w') do |f|
   f.write(Sass::Engine.new(IO.read(sass)).render)
  end
 end
end

Answer 3

http://www.dotlesscss.com/ - My attempt at playing around with Less for .NET.