Layoutstudio 2.x released

Layoustudio 2.x has been released. This is still under the "dev" category, so proceed with caution. At this juncture I would recommend not using it on a production site. We'd love your feedback if you get the chance to play with it.

The main reason for the 2.x version is to ease integration with the LESS CSS Preporcessor module. This is something that I've been excited about for a long time (Oh yeah, I'm a geek!), but there wasn't a module that provide the full functionality that I would looking for. CSS preprocessing first got my attention with SASS from the Ruby community. There have been some attempts at integration with Drupal, but so far you need special server configs to make it work. CSS Dry was another decent attempt, but I really wanted something more than just nested rules and simple variables.

With the LESS CSS processor and its PHP port, we get the best of both worlds. All the power of SASS and a module that integrates it nicely with Drupal. I was pretty impressed right from the get go.

Whether CSS preprocessors will become mainstream for Drupal themers is still up in the air at this point. For me it's a no brainer. Especially when a large amount of my code follows pretty similar patterns. The ability to have mixins, variables and nested rules is extermely powerful. Once you get used to it, it's hard to go back. There is one drawback at this point, and that's the fact that it screws up Firebug's line numbering.