Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Stylus VS cssnano

Compare Stylus VS cssnano and see what are their differences

Stylus logo Stylus

EXPRESSIVE, DYNAMIC, ROBUST CSS

cssnano logo cssnano

A modular minifier, based on the PostCSS ecosystem. Created by @ben_eb.
  • Stylus Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-20

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.

  • cssnano Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-21

Stylus features and specs

  • Simplified Syntax
    Stylus provides an optional semicolon-free and curly-brace-free syntax, making the code cleaner and easier to write.
  • Extensive Feature Set
    Stylus offers a wide range of features like mixins, nesting, variables, functions, and built-in functions, which increase its flexibility and power.
  • Preprocessor Enhancements
    Stylus includes advanced features that are not available in CSS alone, such as mathematical operations, conditionals, and loops, which can make stylesheets more dynamic and maintainable.
  • JavaScript Interoperability
    Stylus allows embedding of JavaScript expressions and logic directly within the stylesheets, providing developers with additional functionality and control.

Possible disadvantages of Stylus

  • Learning Curve
    The flexibility and multitude of features in Stylus can introduce complexity, making it harder for beginners to grasp quickly compared to more straightforward CSS preprocessors.
  • Less Popularity
    Stylus is less popular than other preprocessors like Sass or LESS, which might result in fewer learning resources, community support, and third-party tools.
  • Potential for Overuse
    The advanced features could lead developers to overuse them, resulting in overly complex code that is difficult to maintain and understand.
  • Build Tool Dependencies
    Integration of Stylus into a project generally requires additional build tools and configurations, which can add to the setup and maintenance overhead.

cssnano features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

Stylus videos

Best stylus for iPhone! Don't waste your money!

More videos:

  • Review - What is the best iPad stylus?
  • Review - Review: MEKO 2-in-1 Stylus (2nd Gen)

cssnano videos

No cssnano videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Stylus and cssnano)
Developer Tools
86 86%
14% 14
CSS Framework
0 0%
100% 100
Browser Extension
100 100%
0% 0
Design Tools
76 76%
24% 24

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Stylus and cssnano

Stylus Reviews

112 Best Chrome Extensions You Should Try (2021 List)
Stylus offers functionality to install and write themes. It is an open-source community-driven extension that makes it much better than its counterparts. Using Stylus, you can install themes from popular repositories, backup your installed styles, and much more. Watch the above video to learn more about Stylus.

cssnano Reviews

We have no reviews of cssnano yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Stylus should be more popular than cssnano. It has been mentiond 14 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Stylus mentions (14)

  • 100+ Must-Have Web Development Resources
    Stylus: Provides a more efficient and elegant way to generate CSS. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • 33 front-end development tools developers use in 2024
    Sass, Less and Stylus, extends CSS by adding variables, nesting mixins, and other features. It's an excellent solution for organizing huge and complex stylesheets. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • BEM Modifiers in Pure CSS Nesting
    I hate preprocessors. Be it SASS, SCSS, LESS, Stylus, or any other. Really, without any exceptions. Though, I think my hatred for preprocessors is not because of the technology itself, but because of how other people use them. Throughout my development career, I have often encountered tickets where a seemingly simple task, like changing the text size, which should take minutes, ended up taking me hours. This is... - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Future of CSS: Functions and Mixins
    Traditionally CSS lacked features such as variables, nesting, mixins, and functions. This was frustrating for Developers as it often led to CSS quickly becoming complex and cumbersome. In an attempt to make code easier and less repetitive CSS pre-processors were born. You would write CSS in the format the pre-processor understood and, at build time, you'd have some nice CSS. The most common pre-processors these... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Quick Guide To CSS Preprocessors
    The Stylus is built on Node.js. It differs from Sass and Less, which are more opinionated to the syntax; the stylus allows you to omit semicolons, colons, and braces if you want at any time. Another cool feature is that the stylus has a property lookup feature. You can do that easily if you set property X relative to property Y's value. The stylus can be more concise because of its flexibility, but it depends on... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
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cssnano mentions (5)

  • How to Optimize CSS for Faster Page Load Speed
    This approach improves your [Core Web Vitals](https://web.dev/vitals/)—specifically Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). --- ### 3. Minify Your CSS Minifying your CSS removes unnecessary whitespace, comments, and redundant code. Use tools like: - [cssnano](https://cssnano.co/) - [CleanCSS](https://www.cleancss.com/css-minify/). - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Maximize Web Performance with CSS Optimization Techniques
    Minifying your CSS involves removing unnecessary whitespace, comments, and reducing property names. This results in smaller file sizes and faster downloads. Use tools like UglifyCSS and CSSNano for this purpose. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Classic Themes with Block Patterns in WordPress
    For the sake of simplicity, my example setup uses a single-file plugin and puts all styles directly into a single style.css file without using further theme.css or theme.json files, which we might want to use depending on the requirements for customizability. Likewise, SASS / SCSS support can be added if it makes life easier for the developer(s) involved. But as we already use PostCSS to control autoprefixing and... - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • How to auto-prefix and minify CSS?
    The cssnano plugin can minify/compress CSS and make it suitable for production use. Install cssnano plugin using this command:. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • CSS: is there any tool our there that cleans up your css file?
    I'd look through the available postcss plugins. Many of them will do what you are looking for, or at least parts of what you are looking for. For example CSSNANO is a css minifier. Source: almost 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Stylus and cssnano, you can also consider the following products

Sass - Syntatically Awesome Style Sheets

PostCSS - Increase code readability. Add vendor prefixes to CSS rules using values from Can I Use. Autoprefixer will use the data based on current browser popularity and property support to apply prefixes for you.

Dark Reader - Reduce eye strain in your browser with this extension that provides a dark theme for browsing.

Purgecss - Easily remove unused CSS

Less - Less extends CSS with dynamic behavior such as variables, mixins, operations and functions. Less runs on both the server-side (with Node. js and Rhino) or client-side (modern browsers only).

Prettier - An opinionated code formatter