CSS Modules vs PostCSS

Overview

PostCSS

Stacks2.4K

Followers547

Votes49

GitHub Stars28.9K

Forks1.6K

CSS Modules

Stacks132

Followers161

Votes2

CSS Modules vs PostCSS: What are the differences?

1. CSS Modules: CSS Modules is a CSS file with scoped and hashed class names that are local to the component it is imported in, avoiding global class naming conflicts.
2. PostCSS: PostCSS is a tool for transforming CSS with JavaScript plugins. It allows you to write custom CSS syntax and use various plugins to extend CSS functionality.
3. CSS Modules: Naming Convention: CSS Modules uses a naming convention that automatically generates unique class names, ensuring that there are no naming conflicts between different components.
4. PostCSS: Plugin System: PostCSS offers a plugin system that allows you to customize and extend the processing of your CSS files. You can choose from a wide range of plugins to optimize, transform, or add new features to your CSS code.
5. CSS Modules: Local Scope: CSS Modules provide local scope to the styles defined within a component, preventing them from affecting other components on the same page. This makes it easier to manage styles and avoids the need for complicated naming conventions.
6. PostCSS: Transformations: PostCSS allows you to perform a variety of transformations on your CSS, such as autoprefixing, minification, or even converting future CSS syntax to backward-compatible CSS.

In summary, CSS Modules and PostCSS differ in their approach and functionality. CSS Modules provide localized scoping and automatic class name generation, while PostCSS offers a plugin system and the ability to perform various transformations on your CSS code.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs

CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on PostCSS, CSS Modules

Anonymous

CEO at ME!

Jun 17, 2020

Needs adviceon

Sass

Stylus

PostCSS

Originally, I was going to start using @{Sass}|tool:1171| with Parcel, but then I learned about @{Stylus}|tool:1172|, which looked interesting because it can get the property values of something directly instead of through variables, and @{PostCSS}|tool:3339|, which looked interesting because you can customize your Pre/Post-processing. Which tool would you recommend?

547k views547k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

PostCSS	CSS Modules
PostCSS is a tool for transforming CSS with JS plugins. These plugins can support variables and mixins, transpile future CSS syntax, inline images, and more.	It is a CSS file in which all class names and animation names are scoped locally by default. The key words here are scoped locally. With this, your CSS class names become similar to local variables in JavaScript. It goes into the compiler, and CSS comes out the other side.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 28.9K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 1.6K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 2.4K	Stacks 132
Followers 547	Followers 161
Votes 49	Votes 2
Pros & Cons
Pros 21 The "babel" of CSS 15 Customizable 8 Autoprefixer 2 Variables 1 Mixins	Pros 2 Static rather than compiled at runtime

What are some alternatives to PostCSS, CSS Modules?

Sass

Sass is an extension of CSS3, adding nested rules, variables, mixins, selector inheritance, and more. It's translated to well-formatted, standard CSS using the command line tool or a web-framework plugin.

Less

Less is a CSS pre-processor, meaning that it extends the CSS language, adding features that allow variables, mixins, functions and many other techniques that allow you to make CSS that is more maintainable, themable and extendable.

Stylus

Stylus is a revolutionary new language, providing an efficient, dynamic, and expressive way to generate CSS. Supporting both an indented syntax and regular CSS style.

Bourbon

Bourbon is a library of pure sass mixins that are designed to be simple and easy to use. No configuration required. The mixins aim to be as vanilla as possible, meaning they should be as close to the original CSS syntax as possible.

Compass

The compass core framework is a design-agnostic framework that provides common code that would otherwise be duplicated across other frameworks and extensions.

astroturf

It lets you write CSS in your JavaScript files without adding any runtime layer, and with your existing CSS processing pipeline.

PreCSS

It combines Sass-like syntactical sugar — like variables, conditionals, and iterators — with emerging CSS features — like logical and custom properties, media query ranges, and image sets.

Animate.css

It is a bunch of cool, fun, and cross-browser animations for you to use in your projects. Great for emphasis, home pages, sliders, and general just-add-water-awesomeness.

Autoprefixer

It is a CSS post processor. It combs through compiled CSS files to add or remove vendor prefixes like -webkit and -moz after checking the code.

css-loader

The css-loader interprets @import and url() like import/require() and will resolve them.

Related Comparisons

CSS Modules vs PostCSS: What are the differences?

1. CSS Modules: CSS Modules is a CSS file with scoped and hashed class names that are local to the component it is imported in, avoiding global class naming conflicts.
2. PostCSS: PostCSS is a tool for transforming CSS with JavaScript plugins. It allows you to write custom CSS syntax and use various plugins to extend CSS functionality.
3. CSS Modules: Naming Convention: CSS Modules uses a naming convention that automatically generates unique class names, ensuring that there are no naming conflicts between different components.
4. PostCSS: Plugin System: PostCSS offers a plugin system that allows you to customize and extend the processing of your CSS files. You can choose from a wide range of plugins to optimize, transform, or add new features to your CSS code.
5. CSS Modules: Local Scope: CSS Modules provide local scope to the styles defined within a component, preventing them from affecting other components on the same page. This makes it easier to manage styles and avoids the need for complicated naming conventions.
6. PostCSS: Transformations: PostCSS allows you to perform a variety of transformations on your CSS, such as autoprefixing, minification, or even converting future CSS syntax to backward-compatible CSS.

CSS Modules vs PostCSS

Overview