PostCSS vs PreCSS

Overview

PostCSS

Stacks2.4K

Followers547

Votes49

GitHub Stars28.9K

Forks1.6K

PreCSS

Stacks1

Followers5

Votes1

PostCSS vs PreCSS: What are the differences?

Introduction

In web development, CSS is a vital tool that allows developers to style and present web pages. PostCSS and PreCSS are two popular tools that enable developers to enhance their CSS workflow, but they have distinct differences. This Markdown code provides a concise and formatted comparison of the key differences between PostCSS and PreCSS, highlighting their unique features and functionalities.

Support for CSS Custom Properties: PostCSS allows developers to use CSS Custom Properties extensively. With the help of plugins like postcss-custom-properties, it enables the use of variables, making the code more modular and maintainable. PreCSS, on the other hand, does not possess native support for CSS Custom Properties, limiting its flexibility in this aspect.
Sass-Like Syntax: PreCSS offers a Sass-like syntax, allowing developers to write CSS with nesting, variables, mixins, and more. This provides a familiar and convenient way for developers who are accustomed to Sass to transition to using PreCSS. PostCSS, however, does not provide a Sass-like syntax by default, requiring the use of additional plugins such as postcss-scss to achieve similar functionality.
Browser Compatibility and Prefixing: PostCSS is equipped with various plugins like autoprefixer that automatically add vendor prefixes to CSS properties, ensuring better browser compatibility. These plugins can be added as part of the PostCSS pipeline, streamlining the development process. PreCSS, on the other hand, does not have built-in support for prefixing, necessitating manual prefixing or the use of additional libraries for achieving cross-browser compatibility.
Advanced Mathematical Expressions: PreCSS offers support for mathematical expressions within CSS, allowing developers to perform calculations with CSS properties. This can be useful for dynamic layout adjustments or creating responsive designs. PostCSS does not natively support mathematical expressions, requiring the use of specific plugins such as postcss-math to achieve similar functionality.
Integration with CSS-in-JS Libraries: PostCSS serves as a good companion to CSS-in-JS libraries, allowing developers to combine the benefits of both worlds. It enables the use of CSS Custom Properties and other PostCSS plugins within CSS-in-JS codebases, enhancing flexibility and extensibility. PreCSS does not have the same level of integration and compatibility with CSS-in-JS libraries, making it less suitable for projects utilizing this approach.
Developer Community and Ecosystem: PostCSS boasts a larger and more active developer community, resulting in a wider range of plugins, tools, and resources available to extend its functionality and address various use cases. PreCSS, while still having an active community, is relatively smaller and may have limited plugin availability and community support compared to PostCSS.

In summary, PostCSS offers extensive support for CSS Custom Properties, a larger developer community, better integration with CSS-in-JS libraries, and built-in vendor prefixing, making it a versatile tool for improving CSS workflows. PreCSS, on the other hand, provides a Sass-like syntax, support for mathematical expressions, and easier migration for Sass users, but lacks native CSS Custom Properties support and built-in prefixing capabilities. Both tools have their strengths and are valuable assets in different scenarios, depending on the specific needs and preferences of the development team.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on PostCSS, PreCSS

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?

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

PostCSS	PreCSS
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 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.
-	Sass-like; Variables, conditionals, and iterators; Emerging CSS features
Statistics
GitHub Stars 28.9K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 1.6K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 2.4K	Stacks 1
Followers 547	Followers 5
Votes 49	Votes 1
Pros & Cons
Pros 21 The "babel" of CSS 15 Customizable 8 Autoprefixer 2 Variables 1 Mixins	Pros 1 Sass in PostCSS

What are some alternatives to PostCSS, PreCSS?

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.

CSS Modules

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.

astroturf

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

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

PostCSS vs PreCSS: What are the differences?

Introduction

Support for CSS Custom Properties: PostCSS allows developers to use CSS Custom Properties extensively. With the help of plugins like postcss-custom-properties, it enables the use of variables, making the code more modular and maintainable. PreCSS, on the other hand, does not possess native support for CSS Custom Properties, limiting its flexibility in this aspect.
Sass-Like Syntax: PreCSS offers a Sass-like syntax, allowing developers to write CSS with nesting, variables, mixins, and more. This provides a familiar and convenient way for developers who are accustomed to Sass to transition to using PreCSS. PostCSS, however, does not provide a Sass-like syntax by default, requiring the use of additional plugins such as postcss-scss to achieve similar functionality.
Browser Compatibility and Prefixing: PostCSS is equipped with various plugins like autoprefixer that automatically add vendor prefixes to CSS properties, ensuring better browser compatibility. These plugins can be added as part of the PostCSS pipeline, streamlining the development process. PreCSS, on the other hand, does not have built-in support for prefixing, necessitating manual prefixing or the use of additional libraries for achieving cross-browser compatibility.
Advanced Mathematical Expressions: PreCSS offers support for mathematical expressions within CSS, allowing developers to perform calculations with CSS properties. This can be useful for dynamic layout adjustments or creating responsive designs. PostCSS does not natively support mathematical expressions, requiring the use of specific plugins such as postcss-math to achieve similar functionality.
Integration with CSS-in-JS Libraries: PostCSS serves as a good companion to CSS-in-JS libraries, allowing developers to combine the benefits of both worlds. It enables the use of CSS Custom Properties and other PostCSS plugins within CSS-in-JS codebases, enhancing flexibility and extensibility. PreCSS does not have the same level of integration and compatibility with CSS-in-JS libraries, making it less suitable for projects utilizing this approach.
Developer Community and Ecosystem: PostCSS boasts a larger and more active developer community, resulting in a wider range of plugins, tools, and resources available to extend its functionality and address various use cases. PreCSS, while still having an active community, is relatively smaller and may have limited plugin availability and community support compared to PostCSS.

PostCSS vs PreCSS

Overview

PostCSS vs PreCSS: What are the differences?