Concise CSS is a lightweight CSS framework that provides a number of great features without the bloat.

Concise CSS provides a solid foundation to stylize your website. It offers an alternative to frameworks like Bootstrap and Foundation, with the difference that Concise only includes the minimum styles required. That does not mean that the features are limited; is possible to use add-ons on top of the core to extend the functionality as required.

The core of the framework only includes styles for native HTML elements. Components and utilities are provided as optional add-ons, Concise UI and Concise Utils, respectively.

Concise CSS is written using a custom CSS preprocessor, built on top of Sass and some PostCSS plugins; this means that you can still write Sass code as usual, but you can also enjoy of other custom features, like the lh unit provided to handle vertical rhythm.

There are 4 different options to install Concise CSS in your website, although the recommended way is to use NPM.

If you just want to try Concise CSS or of you do not have plans to customize the styles, you can use our CDN, this is the easier way to get started with the framework—and if you like it—is recommended to switch to NPM so that you can customize the styles.

<!-- Normal - Latest version -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="//cdn.concisecss.com/concise.css">

<!-- Minified - Latest version -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="//cdn.concisecss.com/concise.min.css">

All major and minor versions of Concise exist in its own folder on the CDN. You can use specific versions of Concise with the CDN by prefixing the CSS file with the version number in the URL.

For example, you can use the latest version as such:

<!-- Normal - Specific version -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="//cdn.concisecss.com/v4.1/concise.css">

<!-- Minified - Specific version -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="//cdn.concisecss.com/v4.1/concise.min.css">

Note: All patch versions of Concise get published automatically to the non-prefixed URL. Patch versions are not organized into a folder.

Execute the following command to install Concise CSS from NPM. If you are new to NPM, you can check their documentation.

npm install concise.css

Then you can include the main file inside your project:

//
// myStyles.scss
// ---------

// Concise Core
@import "node_modules/concise.css/concise";

Execute the following command to install Concise CSS from diamond. If you are new to diamond, you can check their documentation.

diamond install concise.css

Then you can include the main file inside your project:

//
// myStyles.scss
// ---------

// Concise Core
@import "~concise.css";

Finally, if you prefer, you can just copy the framework files to your project folder. You can download the latest version from Github from this link, and place the files wherever you need them.

To build the source files, you need to install the Concise CLI globally (locally if you compile the files with an NPM script):

npm install -g concise-cli

Once it is installed, you can compile source files with the concisecss compile command:

concisecss compile input.scss output.css

Note: When compiling the source code with the Concise CLI, Autoprefixer will automatically add the required browser prefixes for the last two browser versions.

To build with diamond, simply use the diamond compile command. If you are new to diamond, you can check their documentation.

diamond compile -o output.css input.scss

You can keep up-to-date with the changes that we have made via our releases page.

** Thanks to thoughtbot for this great way to handling questions for an open source project.

In lieu of a mailing list, we are going to manage all specific questions through Stack Overflow.

Members of the Concise team are subscribed to specific tags via Stack Exchange Filters, so that if a question is properly tagged, we can respond in a timely manner and help.

Which tags?

Ideally, we would like to keep it to just one tag for Concise questions, but we are subscribed to multiple variants to make sure nothing passes by us. However, for everybody asking a question, please use:

• Concise

Where do I post this?

There are lots of different things that people will want to post regarding the Concise framework. Here is a rough outline of where you should post any given issue, question or contribution:

• Use Stack Overflow if you need help
• Use GitHub Issues if you found a bug
• Use GitHub Issues if you have an idea
• Use GitHub Issues if you want to ask a question
• Submit a pull request if you want to contribute

If you wish to contribute to the Concise CSS project, please read through our contributing guidelines first and then help however you’d like!

Concise is currently maintained under the Semantic Versioning guidelines.

Code released under the MIT license. Documentation released under Creative Commons.