Editing live with SASS

[jshjohnson]

I’ve just got to grips with SASS and Compass and have been using it locally. Is there a simpler way of uploading the files online though? My natural instinct is to edit live files but it just doesn’t work with SASS.

How do people go about updating their live css files?

[tomrogers123]

It’s a little more complex than you may want to get to start with but a good thing to watch at some point would be Chris’s screencast on deploying from a local environment (where the CSS is generated) from the Beanstalk web service: https://css-tricks.com/video-screencasts/109-getting-off-ftp-and-onto-git-deployment-with-beanstalk/

If you just can’t kick the live editing addiction, I’ve just Googled and found this for you: https://github.com/richthegeek/phpsass. I think it will take your SCSS and parse it into CSS files right on the server. Hopefully, it has good caching so that stylesheets don’t need to parse on every request.

Even if this does work, I would still suggest trying to get away from those pesky live editing habits. You can think of the extra hassle of version control as a balance for all that time you’re saving not having to type out the same property 10 times. :)

[TheDoc]

I would argue that you’re seeing less and less live editing in that sense of the word. I wouldn’t dare edit a file directly on the server anymore (that was a bad habit brought on when I was using Coda).

If you want the ‘Live’ feel you can check out things like LiveReload.

[GJN]

Equally you could use [codepen](http://codepen.io/) for quick edits that supports SCSS with Compass, but I could recommend LiveReload as well, it works in a similar way to CodeKit.

[gilgimech]

Well, you shouldn’t have to upload your SASS files to the server. SASS doesn’t have any use on a server. It’s only for pre-processing. Unless you need to store you SASS files there for some reason.

It’s better to develop locally than developing on a server. Mainly for user. Nothing sucks more than going to a site and finding it broken, or even worse. Being in the middle of using a site and have it break on you. Yeah I’m looking at you walmart.com!

[brydeboel]

Sometimes when I need to use the CSS generated from SASS on a “live site”, I put my SASS directory in the public Dropbox folder afterwards insert the public link to the CSS file in the HTML doc.

[sliver37]

For small websites, $1000 jobs of ye’ olde average web worker, this whole “local only” workflow can be a pain… Especially if you have maintenance contracts with your clients.

If you’re not on your main working system and a client calls up requesting the most basic of changes “Can you change x to red, thanks”. You have to go switch on your work PC, get Scout running (In the case of windows) get your local server running, make the change, push that to the server…

When previously you could just launch your FTP editor, or hell even use your phone if you’re out of the office and make the tiny change.

There are thousands of reasons why working locally with SASS (especially with version control) is the way to go forward but there are many times where I miss the speed and convenience, bad habit or not!

[leroypollie]

@sliver37: This is exactly the reason why i stumbled upon this discussions

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