Sorry about the frequent updates recently. We integrated a crash reporter and have fixed a bunch of issues (many are fairly weird Visual Studio internal issues we're working around that we can't easily explain beyond 'stability improvements').
We'll be slowing down the update cycle as we have had a few people raise issues with this!
I hope that helps & thanks so much for your feedback!
Sorry about the frequent updates recently. We integrated a crash reporter and have fixed a bunch of issues (many are fairly weird Visual Studio internal issues we're working around that we can't easily explain beyond 'stability improvements').
I'm glad you're not a user who has experienced some of the issues though! We are slowing down the update cycle as we've squashed all the issues that were reported.
Back to new feature development! :-)
I hope that helps & thanks so much for your feedback!
Hello, I find that plugin through some lectures. But I have a problem with it. I add a .scss file but when I save it, .css isn't created. What is wrong?
WB does work in many ways and fails to work in some:
Works: -- Intellisense is great! Works with included files -- Coloring is great! It's not the best, but it's visually different from standard stylesheets -- Formatting is untouched! I really hate when an IDE tries to arrange my code the way it thinks and WB does not -- Warnings are great -- In fact trivial features are great :)
But non trivial are not so great...
Does not work: -- Renaming both Source and dependent file -- WB along side WebEssentials -- Parsing time depends on the total count of existing scss files in the project (n*100+, n>5), rather than complexity of the file -- body{color:red} with no imports parses in like 5 seconds -- Huge files parse in more than 30 seconds each -- space in brackets --> I prefer @include mixin( $params ) <-- notice space. Highlighting breaks
In addition, there is not enough help on the advanced settings fields.
Great tool, once it is setup. But the lack of "select/deselect" all on the workbench settings make it really painful to setup. Once it is setup it works ok, but opening a project with Bootstrap twitter less files that inherits and only require one file to convert and minify is very cumbersome to deselect check marks on every row.
We're overdue for redesigning the whole settings UI since it's grown a bit all over the show as we've added features. We're looking at doing a redesign of that whole screen in early 2013 so keep your eyes open for a release that makes things better.
as of the release dated 10/4/2012 many of the issues mentioned in this seems to go away. However I do have VS 2010 and VS 2012 installed. BTB: I used it in VS 2012 and works good on a small sample file. I don't mind the popup ad text that can be minimized.
The following are some of the improvements still pending: Control+Space still not working and it appears that it is not pulling the stylesheet lookup properties, instead asp.net properties, hence if I use font it shows only 9 properties starting with font instead of the 18 properties in a css file.
DOUBLE EDIT: Do you guys have any plans to include CSS class and ID to intellisense?
TRIPLE EDIT. I guess I can't write a new comment, so I'll just keep tacking on to the end of this one..... OH NO!! I just upgraded to VS2012 (Boss made me, I didn't really want to...) And now every time I drop a colon after an attribute in my LESS file, VS crashes completely! The debugger told me the following: There was an unhandled XamlParseException, Could not find a part of the path 'C:\Mindscape.WebWorkbench.Integration.10;component\Images\Member.png'.
It seems that when the intellisense is triggered, it throws a remarkably fatal exception. Am I the only one with this problem?
So it seems that this only happens when Mindscape is installed for both 2010 AND 2012. I put it just on 2012 and now it works. Hope I don't have to go back to 2010 anytime soon!
Good product, a little disappointed with some of the free version limitations. As a developer of course I understand the need to make a living from your work and am not at all offended by an upgrade option, and not even by the small ad placed in the editor. The compilation and minification are solid features that seem appropriate for a paid version, but some basic editor workflow actions like format document and comment/uncomment selection IMO are an unnecessary annoyance to exclude from the free version.
If there's anything in particular about it being fully featured please let us know. Since we're already running it in there it shouldn't be a big jump to make it more available to you :-)
Hi MysticMan, Thanks for the rating and your feedback. Would love for you to ping us at support@mindscape.co.nz so we can help iron out your speed issues. We've undertaken a lot of work in recent builds to improve performance so perhaps there's something specific to your setup that we could fix for you? Hope to hear from you!
Great extension; it would be great however if there was the ability to call up the intellisense for CSS rules by CTRL+Space. It currently just creates a space. Also, it seems as though it doesn't always apply color-coding to the text.
Pretty good. It doesn't seem to follow imports in less files in order to provide intellisense on mixins. Maybe this is a pro feature, but I didn't see it listed. Also, the VS2012 file icons should be changed to fit with the VS2012 style - the orange icon for .less files really stands out.
Sadly it doesn't work with Express. This is because Microsoft does not allow for extensions in the Express edition (it's a limitation of the Express version - not something we have any say over).
We'd love to have it work with the Express version but we can't sorry.
Using the bundled ruby installation doesn't generate .css files out of .scss files.
Pointing to to ruby folder (C:\Ruby200-x64\bin or C:\Ruby200-x64\bin\ruby.exe or C:\Ruby200-x64\bin\rubyw.exe) generates .css file with the following message in it:
===============================================
/* System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception (0x80004005): The system cannot find the file specified
at System.Diagnostics.Process.StartWithCreateProcess(ProcessStartInfo startInfo)
at System.Diagnostics.Process.Start()
at Mindscape.VisualSass.Integration.CustomTool.ExternalCommandBase.Execute(String customToolFolder)
at Mindscape.VisualSass.Integration.Compilation.CompassCompiler.CompileCore(String text, String sourceFilePath, String rootPath, IEnumerable`1 additionalPaths, ICompilationSettings settings, ICompilerContext context, CompilationResult result)
at Mindscape.VisualSass.Integration.Compilation.CompilerWithMinification.Compile(String text, String sourceFilePath, String rootPath, IEnumerable`1 additionalPaths, ICompilationSettings settings, ICompilerContext context, CompilationResult result) */
===============================================
Has no effect on .sass files. Doesn't generate .css at all.
Does this thread help?
Hi Hrusi & Riderman,
http://www.mindscapehq.com/forums/thread/631361
Usually posting on the Mindscape forum will get a faster result since the developers typically answer on there.
I hope that helps!
Hi,
First of all, thank you for making this great extension.
I just got the latest Mindscape update version 3.2.837.22573 but it gives me the following errors in the css file that SASS produces.
/* System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception (0x80004005): The system cannot find the file specified
at System.Diagnostics.Process.StartWithCreateProcess(ProcessStartInfo startInfo)
at System.Diagnostics.Process.Start()
at Mindscape.VisualSass.Integration.CustomTool.ExternalCommandBase.Execute(String customToolFolder)
at Mindscape.VisualSass.Integration.Compilation.ScssCompiler.CompileCore(String scss, String sourceFilePath, String rootPath, IEnumerable`1 additionalPaths, ICompilationSettings settings, ICompilerContext context, CompilationResult result)
at Mindscape.VisualSass.Integration.Compilation.CompilerWithMinification.Compile(String text, String sourceFilePath, String rootPath, IEnumerable`1 additionalPaths, ICompilationSettings settings, ICompilerContext context, CompilationResult result) */
Any ideas?
Hi Handitan,
Have you checked this thread?
http://www.mindscapehq.com/forums/thread/631361
Usually posting on the Mindscape forum will get a faster result since the developers typically answer on there.
I hope that helps!
I downloaded the free version and it still won't run as it asks for a licence key? I do not want to buy any pro versions, I need Workbench only for a class I'm attending...Why is this download done so misleading? Can someone guide me to where I can download the real FREE Workbench???? Thanks in advance
After the recently update I am starting to get these errors when working on a .scss
/* System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception (0x80004005): The system cannot find the file specified
at System.Diagnostics.Process.StartWithCreateProcess(ProcessStartInfo startInfo)
at System.Diagnostics.Process.Start()
at Mindscape.VisualSass.Integration.CustomTool.ExternalCommandBase.Execute(String customToolFolder)
at Mindscape.VisualSass.Integration.Compilation.ScssCompiler.CompileCore(String scss, String sourceFilePath, String rootPath, IEnumerable`1 additionalPaths, ICompilationSettings settings, ICompilerContext context, CompilationResult result)
at Mindscape.VisualSass.Integration.Compilation.CompilerWithMinification.Compile(String text, String sourceFilePath, String rootPath, IEnumerable`1 additionalPaths, ICompilationSettings settings, ICompilerContext context, CompilationResult result) */
In an 1800 line LESS file, I am noticing that all coloring/formatting is being applied for every single keystroke causing the editing experience to be very slow. It seem like there should be a timer to not do all the coloring until there is an N millisecond pause in keystrokes.
Hi,
I came back from a 2 week holiday last monday and say an update for the Web Workbench, so I installed it.
But now stuff started happening which is really annoying me:
- Syntax highlighting for nested rules is messed up: http://kipusoep.nl/1.png
The first line with a { } is wrong, the second line is good
- Syntax highlighting for variables is broken: http://kipusoep.nl/2.png (first line)
- Less comments breaks the syntax highlighting for the rest of the page: http://kipusoep.nl/2.png (lines 3 - 5)
- Pressing the enter key in various situations leads to unwanted behavior
- Look at the cursor in this screenshot: http://kipusoep.nl/2.png
When I press the enter key on that spot, this happens: http://kipusoep.nl/3.png
- Take a look at these screenshots: http://kipusoep.nl/4.png
The first arrow arrows means 'Pressing the enter key'. The second arrow means 'Pressing the } key followed by the enter key'. It's just completely confused it seems.
Hi Kipus0ep,
Thanks for the feedback -- I'll just note that Jeremy will be helping you over on our forum (we get better notifications there so usually use that). Quickly though, we can't reproduce this behaviour so Jeremy will probably need to get some additional information from you.
Since I was running into problems with the intellisense and highlighting for .less files. I uninstalled Chirpy. I had Workbench installed prior to installing Chirpy, but after I uninstalled it, all intellisense and highlighting for it stopped working. I checked and Chirpy was completely gone from my machine. It was removed from the "Add-Ins" folder in both VS2010 and VS2008. And sometimes the highlighting comes back intermittently, but is gone the next time I open VS. Any help would be apprieciated.
Thanks.
I have it installed, open a new web project, right click add file-> nothing. None of the file types are available for creation. I am on VS2010 and I see the MindScape extension listed under installed extensions. I've tried this twice, what could I be doing wrong?
Hi,
This was likely because there was no templates for Web Site projects. This should now be fixed in the new version we just deployed - can you please grab the update and see if it works? If it doesn't you can create a normal .txt file and rename it to a .less file in the meantime.
I hope that helps!
Hello,
I use you tool mainly with twitter bootstrap but the latest less files are written in less 1.3 and they give errors. Will there be an update so the less files will work when written in less 1.3 style.
Greetings
