Suggestions/Request: Faster Compile & Better Intellisense (SCSS)

I've seen a couple of posts for these two issues but I wanted to add my two cents.

First, I'm loving the response that you guys as a company are giving. No fluff, just real answers explaining what you're facing so please keep that up. I might have just given up if it weren't for that.

I'm downloading the nightly builds and the compile time has gone down, but I would like to see it go down more. Also, working inside the files, there seems to be a decent lag while typing. I'm not sure if it's the intellisense trying to keep up, but it wears on me while I'm working.

That leads me to the intellisense. I'm not getting any intellisense on mixins or functions. Nor am I getting intellisense on the CSS properties (not the potential values of the properties, but the properties themselves - i.e. "text-align"). I would love to have both of those things while I'm typing and have the editor keep up with my typing like Resharper or native VS does.

You guys are blazing a trail here and I commend you for that. I've read that the Ruby compiler for SCSS isn't the greatest on Windows (or in general for that matter - I guess), but writing your own would prove to be costly for you. I understand those decisions and I can only encourage you to do so from my perspective. I would gladly pay an upgrade cost to get this product to a high level of productivity. I think if you did go down that path it could be a very big selling point for future sales. Just my opinion though.

Thanks for putting this product out there. :-)

Intellisense on CSS properties should be working - just to check do you have Chirpy installed (or have ever had it installed)? If you do can you uninstall it and check if that solves the problem, we have seen a lot of issues with having that installed alongside Web Workbench. If not can you send me through an example file you are working on where you are getting no intellisense (although from what you have said I am assuming it is any file?).

Jeremy

First of all, the compile times are much faster with the nightly build I've been getting recently so job well done!

The intellisense is a bit of a mystery though. It is happening everywhere, and I don't have Chirpy installed (and don't believe I ever installed it for that matter). When I start typing the CSS property name (i.e. "background-*") nothing happens. But when I complete the property name and hit the semi-colon, intellisense comes alive and I'm given the choice of my SCSS variables as well as the options for the CSS property itself.

Also, the editor is lagging somewhat behind my typing speed which can be irritating sometimes. I don't type with blazing speed either. Perhaps 60-70 wpm when I'm going full throttle on a continuous stream of consciousness. Not sure if it's related to the intellisense issue.

Hi,

Just butting in on Jeremy's thread here, but a question & a request:

• If you create a new SCSS file and just create a simple body selector and then start putting a background in, does that work for intellisense?
• Could you send us your SCSS file? Either attach it to this post or email it to support@mindscape.co.nz if you'd rather it stay private.

Sometimes intellisense can be thrown off by "errors" before it (I quote it because the error could be that we're not parsing something entirely valid correctly). I'm curious about your slow downs though as well. If we have your file we can add it to our testing suite and see if we can improve things. Sometimes we've found very particular cases for slow downs that wouldn't impact all users so maybe there's something up with your file in particular. Either way it's always good to have it to test against :-)

Thanks!

John-Daniel

Hi John-Daniel.

Butting in is always welcome. :-)

I created a new SCSS file and the intellisense works just fine but not in the current files and project I’m working in.

I did have the compilation and minification turned off for these files (I’m importing everything into one top-level SCSS file to have the CSS in one request). I turned the compilation and minification back on to see if that would get the intellisense working again, but didn’t seem to help.

Mid-Post Update

Okay, I think I just nailed it down. The intellisense breaks down after doing something like this:

[intellisense works here before the following SCSS syntax]

margin: {
    top: 10px;
    right: 5px;
    bottom: 20px;
    left: 5px;
}

[here is where intellisense breaks down – anything after the previous syntax]

Funny thing is that if you put a semicolon at the end of the closing brace of margin intellisense starts to work again. Example:

margin: {
    top: 10px;
    right: 5px;
    bottom: 20px;
    left: 5px;
};

Of course that throws a compilation error. :-)

I do this type of SCSS syntax a lot while in an iterative development cycle to test different settings and spelling out the individual arguments helps me personally.

Hopefully this helps you guys out. Let me know if I can do anything else. This is a great product with (obviously) fantastic support so I only hope you guys are fruitful with this endeavor so you can keep going with it. :-)

-Brian Hall-

I'm not sure I follow. Are you asking about my inline code with my post or inside one of the attached files?

If it's the inline code, that syntax setup is intentional and, AFAIK, correct. If you search for "Arguments" on the SASS language site you'll see the same syntax (http://sass-lang.com/docs/yardoc/file.SASS_REFERENCE.html).

Let me know if I understand your question correctly or not. :-)

Hi Brian,

You're indeed correct, however that only applies if it's an argument inside a mixin, which your margin: example is not. We do handle the : being there if it's within a mixin. E.g. this parses fine:

@mixin foo {  margin: {    top: 10px;    right: 5px;    bottom: 20px;    left: 5px;  } }

But judging from the spec, it's intended only for that usage. So I think removing the : is the right thing to do. We will add an item to the backlog to make the parser a little more forgiving (or highlight better when it's an inappropriate use of the : character).

I hope that helps,

John-Daniel

P.S. I posted this under the wrong account before so deleted the post. :-) Here for completeness.

Thanks for that Brian.

Quick question, you have margin: but no value after the : (like hover). Is this intentional?

It seems to be that colon that causes the intellisense issue. If you don't particularly need it can you remove it? I can't seem to find a good spec that says it's valid to have the colon with nothing after it (although it doesn't seem to explicitly rule it out either).

Appreciate your thoughts on the use of the colon there :-)

John-Daniel

Ah ha! I see the error of my ways. :-)

If I remove the colon it becomes a SCSS variable (or at least the syntax highlighting indicates that to be so). Either way, upon closer inspection of the SASS spec, you appear to be correct with regards to proper use of the arguments syntax. Too bad. I rather like that kind of workflow within normal CSS.

Oh well, I'll be refactoring my SCSS files to make everything properly formatted CSS where required.

No worries on the dual personalities within the forum. It happens to the best of both of us - in addition to you. ;-)

Thanks again for the help! You guys rock!

-Brian Hall-

Hi Brian,

As a separate update, I have added in some more intellisense support around functions and mixins which you can check out via the nightly builds. Let us know if there is anything else specifically you think we need to add around this.

Jeremy

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for the update. I'm not seeing anything new with intellisense for mixins or functions. Like you have seen above, it could be a user error here. :-)

* *Mid-Post Update **

I take that back. I see that the functions are now showing up in the intellisense as long as the function is defined inside the same file. I have most of my functions defined in a separate file and I @import them into the scss files where needed.

As far as what I would like to see in this area, there are a few things:

1. Have the functions and mixins get picked up by the intellisense even if they are in a separate file.
2. Provide an arguments list for mixins and functions in the intellisense. Even if we as users needed to do some type of XML commenting to provide definition support (though it would be nice if we didn't have to)
3. The ability to "GoTo Definition" by Ctrl + click on the function, mixin, or variable.
4. Some type of keyboard shortcut combination that shows us the possible things we can enter. This is much like what ReSharper does when you press Ctrl>Alt>Spacebar. With ReSharper, that keyboard combination brings up the intellisense possibilities contextually where ever you're at in your code.

Those are the things that keep popping out at me as I'm working. Hopefully this is helpful.

I haven't looked, but is there a UserVoice site set up for this product?

Thanks for the feedback. Ill have a look at picking up the functions/mixins from imported files. The other suggestions sound great but will require a bit more effort to get implemented so I will note these down on our backlog for future enhancements.

We don't have a UserVoice site, but we are going to be putting in feature voting into the forum in the near future so we will be using that to track feature interest and prioritize accordingly :)

Jeremy

Sounds good Jeremy. I really appreciate the feedback loop. Looking forward to what you guys come up with next. Keep up the great work!