Top VS Code Extensions to Supercharge Your CSS Workflow

by Vipe Team in WordPress Development; Published on 25.10.2024

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One of the most impressive parts of Visual Studio Code is customizability, especially via extensions. With tons of developers creating extensions, the functionality is literally endless! Here are some of the best extensions in VS Code for writing CSS.

HTML CSS Support

HTML CSS Support (and the next extension listed) provides intellisense in your HTML files based on the CSS that is included in your project or referenced remotely. Here’s a full list of features:

Class attribute completion
Id attribute completion
Supports Zen Coding completion for class and id attributes
Scans workspace folder for css and scss files
Supports remote css files

One thing that really stands out about this one is that you can specify remote CSS files to cache as well. You can do this by adding the following setting. This example is referring to the Bootstrap 4 CSS file.

"css.remoteStyleSheets": ["https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.0.0-alpha.6/css/bootstrap.min.css"]

Intellisense for CSS Class Names

Intellisense for CSS Class Names provides similar functionality to the extension above. This one will also automatically pull classes from CSS referenced in your HTML files. These class definitions will also be available via intellisense when using Emmet as well!

At any point, you can trigger a re-cache of the classes from your CSS files by opening up the Command Palette.

Autoprefixer

Having to prefix certain CSS properties to ensure browser support can be an extreme hassle. If it weren’t for the workflows already configured with Create React App, Angular CLI, etc., I would completely forget to add the vendor prefixes.

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Autoprefixer will automatically add vendor prefixes to make sure your app looks as good as possible in different browsers. It’s crazy simple. Open the Command Palette and call “Autoprefixer CSS”.

CSS Peek

If you’re anything like me, I hate having to toggle over to my .css file to check the properties attached to a class or id. With CSS Peek, you can view a hover image of your CSS from within your HTML file.

This extension also turns class names and ids into a hyperlink that takes you directly to that class or id definition in your CSS!

Prettier – Code Formatter

Never worry about formatting again. Set up Prettier once, and it takes care of the rest!

Prettier – Code Formatter is incredibly popular for auto-formatting your JavaScript, but did you know it auto-formats CSS as well? Well, it does, and it’s awesome!

You can set this up to run on save automatically or manually if you choose.

Bootstrap 4, Font Awesome 4, Font Awesome 5 Free & Pro snippets

Sure, not every project uses Bootstrap or Font Awesome, but a ton of them do. That’s why I figured it was worth sharing this extension which provides intellisense for Bootstrap 4, Font Awesome 4, and Font Awesome 5.

There are so many classes in Bootstrap that it’s impossible to memorize them all. Same with working with Font Awesome. I have to look up the syntax every time I want to add an icon, but not anymore!

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To activate the snippets for Bootstrap, use “B4”.

and “FA5” for Font Awesome 5.

Recap

There you go, some of the best CSS extensions for Visual Studio Code. If you think we’ve missed anything, comment below and share your favorites!