less/less-docs

lesscss.org

Official website and documentation for Less/Less.js

Quickstart

Assemble and Grunt are used to build the docs. To get started:

1. Download the docs
2. In the root of the project, run npm install
3. Run the grunt command to build the docs

If all worked properly, you're ready to begin contributing to the docs!

Documentation

All documentation content can be found in the ./content directory. Please read the contributing section below if you wish to add documentation.

The Plan

1. Clean up and organize all of the documentation in the content directory, which means
2. Consistent naming conventions for files, consistent coding styles in documents
3. Organize information and favor individual files for sections of content, rather than long documents
4. Last, a new theme.

Contributing

Coding Style

Please help us make the documentation consistent, readable, and maintainable by conforming to these guidelines when contributing:

Less, LESS or Less.js?

The name of the project is Less. Anywhere in the docs, Less means both the language and its official, reference implementation. The less.js form is normally to be used only to specify either of:

• the browser script file name
• the particular GitHub repository (where most of the development takes place)

Examples:

• "Less language", "Less library", "Less API", "Less plugin", "Using Less" etc.
• "Fork less/less.js repository" (synonyms: "Less Repository", "Main Repository" etc.)
• "Make sure to include your stylesheets before the less.js script"

Capitalization

In Titles: Do Capitalize

• Nouns (man, bus, book)
• Adjectives (angry, lovely, small)
• Verbs (run, eat, sleep)
• Adverbs (slowly, quickly, quietly)
• Pronouns (he, she, it)
• Subordinating conjunctions (as, because, that)

In Titles: Do Not Capitalize

• Articles: a, an, the
• Coordinating Conjunctions: and, but, or, for, nor, etc.
• Prepositions: on, at, to, from, by, etc.

Markdown standards

• Use # for titles, not underlines. Underlines are not semantic, aren't as flexible, aren't always highlighted properly in code highlighters
• Always add a space between the # and the heading
• Wrap inline code with a single backtick,
• wrap blocks of code with three backticks (code fences).
• With code blocks, always use the correct language after the first code fence. Although GitHub does not highlight Less, our documentation is more likely to show up in GitHub's and Google's search results when the correct language is used. Examples: please use ```less for Less, and ```css for CSS.

Less standards

• Two spaces for indentation, never tabs, and always use proper indentation
• Multiple-line formatting (one property and value per line)
• For multiple, comma-separated selectors, place each selector on its own line
• Double quotes only, never single quotes
• Always put a space after a property's colon (e.g., display: block; and not display:block;)
• End all lines with a semi-colon
• Attribute selectors, like input[type="text"] should always wrap the attribute's value in double quotes. This is important to do in your own code as well for consistency and safety (see this blog post on unquoted attribute values that can lead to XSS attacks)
• When using HTML in your examples, use tags and elements appropriate for an HTML5 doctype (e.g., self-closing tags with no trailing slash)
• Separate words in variable and mixin names using dash (e.g., @long-variable-name or .my-favourite-mixin)

Examples:

Good

body {
  padding-top: 80px;
  font-size: 12px;
}

Bad

body {
padding-top: 80px;
font-size: 12px;
}

Bad

body { padding-top: 80px; font-size: 12px }

Also, please ensure that all documentation files should have globally-unique names, regardless of where they are located in the repository. This makes it easier to use conveniences like file globbing, and it's good practice anyway.

Feature Requests, Bugs and Pull Requests

• If you would like to request a feature, suggest an improvement, or report a bug, please submit an Issue.
• Feature requests are more likely to get attention if you include a clearly described use case.
• If you wish to submit a pull request, please read this first.

Tools

The documentation site is generated using Assemble. Please visit that project to report bugs, or to learn more about usage and customization.

Build the docs

Update the project with the most recent metadata from the Less.js project, such as current version number, description, and so on, and then run Grunt with the following command:

node data/_utils/pkg && grunt

License

Copyright (c) 2025, Alexis Sellier, Less Core Team, Contributors Documentation released under Creative Commons. Documentation source code released under the MIT License. Less source code is released under the Apache 2 License.