We build tools that millions of developers rely on
We use open source software regularly, and try to contribute back to the projects we use. We also develop a number of our own tools, that might be useful to others.
Sass support for LCH, Lab, and more CSS color spaces
CSS Color Modules Level 4 & Level 5 include several new CSS color formats, new color-adjustment syntax, and a contrast function. Blend provides early access to many of these features, while working with Sass colors.
Dynamic & interactive color palettes using CSS
Generate dynamic and interactive color palettes. Define custom themes with CSS custom properties, allow user-adjustments with a bit of light-weight JS, and customize the underlying system with Sass.
Automated style guides
Design systems streamline development, communication, and consistency – but often rely on dedicated teams and extended budgets. We wanted a tool that helps create and maintain living style guides & pattern libraries in an agile process, and on a budget. Herman helps you keep your development process simple – and your UX consistent – as you scale over time.
Integrated design-system management in Sass
OddBird’s Accoutrement tools help keep design tokens meaningful to both humans and machines – opening the door for automation, while improving readability. These tools also integrate with Herman, our automated pattern-library generator.
Unit-testing for Sass developers
True is the only full-featured unit-testing framework designed specifically for the Sass language. Write your tests in Sass, compile them with Sass, and then (optionally) pass the results to a Javascript test-runner for command-line control and reporting.
CSS layout framework
Susy was a responsive layout engine for Sass,
before flexbox and CSS grid were available.
Susy is now deprecated, and will not receive updates.
If you need help moving off Susy,
or learning the latest in web layout,
we offer training
and consulting
to help bring you up-to-date.
Developing specifications for the CSS language
Miriam is an Invited Expert on the W3C CSS Working Group, helping to develop the next level of Cascading & Inheritance, in addition to other CSS standards. She’s also active in the CSS4 and Design Token Community Groups.
Addressing the technical debt of CSS
CSS Remedy provides a modern proposal for how CSS should work by default. Browsers are limited on how far they can improve default styles, but you don’t have to stay in the past.
CSS with superpowers
Sass is the most mature, stable, and powerful professional grade CSS extension language in the world. After creating several of the most popular sass toolkits, Miriam became a core contributor to the language.
Sophisticated templating for JavaScript
A powerful markup templating language with block inheritance, autoescaping, macros, asynchronous control, and more. Heavily inspired by Jinja2, Nunjucks is fast, lean, highly performant, and extensible.
Python web framework
Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. Built by experienced developers, it takes care of much of the hassle of Web development, so you can focus on writing your app without needing to reinvent the wheel.
CSS-authoring framework & Sass library
An open source CSS authoring framework which uses the Sass language to make writing and sharing stylesheets powerful and easy. Compass was the first package-manager and toolkit-sharing platform for CSS, helping popularize the Sass language – and offering powerful browser-compatibility tools that changed the landscape for designers developers.
Virtual Python Environment Builder
A tool for creating isolated ‘virtual’ python environments.
Python Package Installer
The PyPA recommended tool for installing Python packages.
with meaningful code and automation
It’s time to move past grid systems like Susy
Agile design systems in Vue
I’ve been excited about Vue.js since Sarah Drasner first showed me the basics. Since then, we’ve started using it for client work at OddBird, and I’m constantly impressed by the power and simplicity – so it was a real honor being invited to speak at the first VueConf US in…
An agile approach to design systems on a budget
Design systems streamline development, communication, and consistency – but often rely on dedicated teams and extended budgets. We wanted a tool to create and maintain living style guides & pattern libraries in an agile process, and on a budget. Herman helps keep our development flow simple, and our UX consistent…
Practical media helpers for Susy3
Most grids change with the viewport – and Susy needs new settings at each breakpoint. Susy3 is designed without mixins for complete flexibility from project to project, but it can be useful to build additional tools and shortcuts as you go. Here are some snippets to help you get started…
Make grid systems your fallback plan
We’re excited to introduce Susy 3.0, a major update to our popular grid-math calculator – now more focused and flexible than ever. Susy was designed to make layout math easy, without forcing you into generic patterns and ugly markup. But grid systems are on the way out, replaced by real CSS layout specs that live in the browser. With Susy3, we want to help make that a smooth transition.
Susy 3.0 will be released in the next week, if all goes well, and there’s a lot to write about it. I wanted to start with a detailed overview of one core concept: spread.
Living Style Guide documentation on the web is a difficult problem, gaining a lot of attention in the last few years. Let’s take an in-depth look at one way to store patterns directly in Sass, and generate documentation automatically.
Code documentation is ideally written as close to the actual code as possible, but compiled into a comprehensive set of documentation that includes code from all languages in use. Here’s how we intend to do that.
I did a live Q&A at SitePoint in August, talking about: Customizing Susy for your projects Other ways to do layouts (and why you might not even need a toolkit) How to select a toolkit, or build your very own!
I did a live Q&A at SitePoint talking about: Customizing Susy for your projects Other ways to do layouts (and why you might not even need a toolkit) How to select a toolkit, or build your very own!
an introduction to the Susy layout toolkit
Susy Next alpha 5 is out, and loaded with changes. We now require Sass 3.3, we no longer require Compass, and there have been major syntax improvements. We’re getting real close to launch, and we’d love to know what you think. Play around, and let us know!
Susy Next alpha 4 is now available.
Go download & play with it!
We haven’t written full docs yet, and this blog post will be vastly incomplete, but I’ll give you a quick rundown of where we’re going. This is all open to change, of course. There’s a reason we’re still in alpha.
A few new features have landed in Susy 1.0.7, even as we work on more integrated syntaxes for 2.0. The isolate() and isolate-grid() mixins help you manage the worst effects of sub-pixel rounding, while bleed() helps you break items out of the box.
Last night we released the very first alpha build of Susy Next. This release is extremely sparse. What we have built is a background ‘engine’ for calculating grid math. There are some rough first steps towards api and syntax, but they are more “proof of concept” experimentation than usable interface.
The web is littered with grid systems and ‘frameworks’ that force your code & design into narrowly defined patterns. Even the most semantic of us have had to push specialized techniques in order to create a usable syntax.
But Sass has come a long way, and I’m convinced that it’s time for something new.
What if you had a layout system that bends completely to the needs of your site? What if you could use one unified syntax for handling responsive layouts of any kind? What if you had a modular system that let you mix-and-match to customize for every site, and change your output with simple extensions?
The off-canvas layout pattern for responsive web design has been getting all the attention lately, and I’ve had several people ask how Susy One might play along. I’ll show you how easy it is, and how much flexibility Susy can add along the way.