Update: Sass 3 Beta 2 introduces a sass-convert --recursive flag for recursively converting stylesheets. This post has been updated to use that flag.

Update: Sass 3.1 no longer supports converting from Sass 2 syntax to Sass 3 syntax. If you still need to do this, install version 3 of the haml gem.

In addition to a brand new syntax, Sass 3 introduces two major changes and one minor change to the existing syntax. I think pretty much everyone will agree that they’re good changes, though. In addition, to ease the upgrade path, Sass 3 also introduces a new, turbocharged version of css2sass known as sass-convert. sass-convert can convert files between CSS, Sass, and SCSS, as well as convert files from the old Sass 2 syntax to the new Sass 3 syntax:

It’s done: I’ve released the first beta of Haml/Sass 3: Classy Cassidy. You can install it right now:

gem install haml --pre

This beta has a ton of functionality; more than I could possibly summarize here. I’ve put up sites to host the documentation, though, so feel free to read the Haml changelog and Sass changelog for full account.

I’ve mentioned earlier that I had set for myself a tentative deadline of March 29 for the release of Haml and Sass 3.0. It’s becoming quite clear to me that that’s not going to happen.

It’s possible that I could get all the technical work, such as coding and testing and documentation, done by then. However, I try to give a broad overview of upcoming releases by way of blog posts here, and moreover I try to only introduce new features when they’re ready to use. I’m sure I’d be unable to develop and write at the necessary pace to get a full 3.0 release out the door in a week.

So here’s what I’m thinking right now: I’ll set out some minorly ambitious goals that I’ll try to meet, as well as some more conservative ones that I’ll commit to meeting.

This post has been translated into Belorussian by fatcow.

One of the most common usability issues people have with Sass is integration with existing tools. In particular, a lot of people (myself included) use Firebug and wish it played nicer with Sass.

In general, since Sass compiles to standard CSS, Firebug can deal with it just fine. One of the nicest features of Firebug when doing CSS work, though, is the ability to tell you where all the styles for an element are defined in your CSS.