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SASS has Compass (a community maintained library of sass mixins/methods).

Does LESS have any supporting libraries that can compare to Compass? Listing anything would be helpful!

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if we make one, we can't call it Less Framework. I started one called LessLib: github.com/dancrew32/lesslib If you happen to visit this page looking for answers, feel free to contribute! –  tester May 10 '11 at 7:05

8 Answers 8

up vote 25 down vote accepted

Another great mini-library...

by Mark Otto, Designer at Twitter


Demo/Site: http://getbootstrap.com/

Github/Source: https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap

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The color variables are a good idea, but they seem to be a little more implementation specific, rather than framework material. However, I really like the grid system and completeness of the gradient mix-ins found in this one. Thank you for contributing, Chris! –  tester May 11 '11 at 14:58
just to keep this up to date, the new github source is github.com/markdotto/Preboot.less –  tester Nov 4 '11 at 17:17
They seem to have moved once more, this time graduating to an official Twitter project. :) I've updated the answer. –  Jo Liss Nov 12 '11 at 15:00
The site does not list all the mixins if you want to use the LESS source directly. However they're easily found in the source in a less/mixins.less file. –  Spoike Apr 3 '13 at 11:17

There are less elements, but it's hardly a collection. I agree it would be nice to have something like this.

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thank you for contributing to this discussion! Every mini-library out there will help! I feel like a lot of people are searching for this stuff but not finding anything about it. –  tester May 10 '11 at 15:04

Take a look at my compless repo. There I try to implement some features of Compass using less. Mixins are divided into categories in a way how it done in Compass' reference. Patches are welcome! :)

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Here are another couple of choices: lesshat and clearless

Also, this blog post compares 3 less libraries: less elements vs bootstrap vs lesshat.

From the post, it seems like both bootstrap and lesshat beat less elements,

however depending what you need you would choose between bootstrap and lesshat.

Bottom line, if you’re looking to completely redefine and systematize the way that you build websites, check out Bootstrap. However, if you’re just a LESS user looking for some mixins, I definitely recommend checking out LESS Hat.


If you're just look looking for some basic mixins, and for you - a whole library is overkill - then maybe this post from css-ticks is more for you.

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I just launched {lessins}, it is a library of common mixins, similar to bootstrap.less or less elements, but with a focus exclusively on mixins (the others include some unecessary variables, that seem remnants of other projects.)

I have also organized the mixins into bundles. Check it out: https://github.com/jdmiller82/-lessins-

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Old question, but right now Lots of Love for Less (3L) is far more complete and generic than Preboot née Bootstrap!

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will check it out! the mobile site is totally unusable on iPhone 4S! –  tester Mar 9 '13 at 15:40
Haha, yeah, it doesn't come with a grid or responsive classes. –  Manuel Mar 11 '13 at 0:40

This is an old question but let me share this recently made Bootstrap3-LESSHAT Boilerplate.

The Boilerplate has the LESS Hat Mixin Library (counterpart of Compass) set up as well as the Font Awesome Iconset.

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There's a new library called more-or-less which is similar lesshat but a lot faster since it does not use inline-javascript.
Just like lesshat it allows to use endless layers for e.g box-shadow or background-image.
It basically has all of the lesshat mixins plus a few other helpful functions.

  • .for()
  • .find()
  • .in()
  • .join()
  • .repeat()

requires Less 1.7.0 or later

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