That’s that over and done with for another year. Whilst the seasonal festivities will continue for a few more days yet, I talk of course of our annual dose of 24 Ways articles.

One of the reoccurring themes in this years selection pack of web design and development goodies is a concept that is splitting opinions like none other. Designing in the browser.

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The problem with CSS pre-processing frameworks is that they don’t really fit within the average web designers’ work flow. Or they don’t mine, anyway.

Having to compile and recompile at every iteration is just a pain in the backside, it’s not the way I work. I like to make some tweaks, view them in the browser, make more tweaks, view them in the browser, and repeat.

When you add in to that the process of going to the command line and recompiling, all of a sudden writing CSS becomes a dull slog. Not the way I like to work.

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Yesterday there was quite a lot of discussion on Twitter about CSS preprocessing frameworks such as SASS and LESS.

It was all in response to a blog article by Nathan Borror detailing why SASS isn’t for him. In the article’s comments there is some interesting debate on the pros and cons of preprocessing frameworks.

For the uninitiated, CSS preprocessing frameworks add clever functionality to writing stylesheets like variables and mix-ins, and ultimately result in writing less CSS to achieve the same result. A good thing in my book.

But it seems many designers are resistant to a technology that abstracts the syntax of a styling language that they are already familiar and comfortable with.

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If you’re like me then your life revolves around email. It is your personal and work central nervous system – your 21st Century digital command centre!

Unfortunately the grip that email now has on all our lives creates as many problems as it solves.

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