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Add to SafariWhen comparing Pocket vs Stylus, the Slant community recommends Pocket for most people. In the question“What are the best Chrome add-ons?” Pocket is ranked 2nd while Stylus is ranked 24th. The most important reason people chose Pocket is:
Pocket is available on iOS, Android, Kobo eReader and on the web.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Available on the web and mobile devices
Pocket is available on iOS, Android, Kobo eReader and on the web.
Pro Allows reading saved content in offline mode
Instead of only saving the link, the content is saved for offline use.
Pro Well-finished GUI and UX
Pro The Pocket plugin for Google Chrome is very stable
Pro Allows tagging bookmarks
Bookmarks can be tagged for search accuracy later on.
Pro Included in Firefox
Pocket is now integrated into the Firefox web browser, and you can login using your firefox/mozilla login, instead of having to create a separate account. This login method can even be used natively on their website, regardless what browser is being used.
Pro Integrates with over 500 apps
A key advantage of Pocket is that it is integrated in over 500 apps as a way to save the link, including Twitter, Flipboard, Pulse and Zite.
Pro Works well across Google Chrome on macOS and iOS
Pro Highlighting available on iOS
Pro Ability to filter by content type
Pro Clean syntax
Stylus has an extremely terse syntax. Colons, semicons and braces are all optional allowing you to write Stylus code however you want.
hover-darken(percent)
if @background
&:hover
background: darken(@background, percent)
.test
background: blue
hover-darken(50%)The hierarchy is required to be whitespace indented which makes it easier to identify which parent selectors child selectors belong to.
Pro Powerful feature set
Not only does Stylus support all the features from Less and Sass, it provides features not found anywhere else:
- You can get properties from parents and pull them into children and/or mixins - if the property isn't found, it will bubble up until it finds a match
- Introspective API, where a CSS block can tell if it’s at root level or not and change its output based on this
- Splats - taking variable amount of arguments in as an array
- Automatically vendor prefixes @keyframes
- Pass a CSS literal block wherever you want
- Convert files to base64
Pro Transparent mixins
One of Stylus' distinguishing features is transparent mixins: reusuable, possibly dynamic styles that look exactly like native CSS properties. This is particularly useful for using future non-prefixed properties and having them transparently expand to their prefixed counterparts without any special, preprocessor-specific syntax.
Pro Easy to integrate in projects already using npm
Stylus runs on node.js which makes it very easy to integrate into your project if you're using npm.
Pro Powerful @extend support
@extend gives inheritance and unlike for other preprocessors, you can pass any CSS selector, not just classes.
Pro Awesome error reporting
Stylus has clear and detailed error reporting that includes stack traces and line numbers.
Pro Lots of mixin libraries
Nib is Stylus's answer to Compass, but with the advantage of transparent mixins.
Ride css add dozens of useful mixins to Stylus. Compatible with axis, nib and other mixins libraries.
Roots is a awesome toolkit that contains a CSS library for Stylus that provides the benefits of Nib and more. It is essentially a collection of mixins that add a variety of enhancements to the Stylus workflow.
Pro Convert files to base64
Stylus can also convert files to base64 which provides the following advantages:
- Easier to maintain
- Gives you the cleanliness of a URL link resource as well the benefits of base64 encoding
- Reducing the number of requests
Pro Easier to learn than some of its competitors
Pro Can do rgba(#hex, alpha)
Pro Great documentation
Pro Large set of built-in functions
Functions like max(), min(), sum(), all collour handling functions are all there.
Pro It has the biggest feature set. Can do more then less or sass
Cons
Con Only the paid version allows to search by tag
Con Correct and open export of bookmarks and tags are not possible
This means that Pocket is (currently) a total lock-in.
This is very sad, unfortunate and creates a no go decision for any seasoned user.
Too many bookmarking and tagging companies have stopped or have gone bankrupt these last years (e.g. Kippt, Spingpad, Delicious (to some extent), etc...). So, if you are going to invest a lot of your personal time and energy in curating your Internet findings (i.e. your bookmarks and tags), it is essential that a total, fair and open export (including all tags) functionality is provided. Personally tested the export "feature" and the resulting .html file that Pocket generates currently included only the URLs themselves, i.e. no save dates nor any of your personally curated tags, nor any other useful meta-data.
This is deplorable, because otherwise, Pocket is a very polished and well-functioning piece of multi-platform and multi-device software/app/web service, with a very easy and well-designed and implemented user interface...
Please fix this, Pocket !
These days of open and inter-operable web services, users are only attracted by valuable functionality, clean UX design and no lockins.
Con Search function in Pro version does not follow the proper date sequence
Although the pro version lets us search by tags, the search results unfortunately does not follow the time sequence of the saving of articles. Search results may show some old articles first, then a bunch of new articles, and then again old articles. It's so random and frustating.
I have been using Pocket pro for quite a long time primarily because it lets me have the permanent copy of a news (this feature is really useful in journalism). However, when I search tag wise for the old references, the absence of time-sequencing the search results really frustates me.
Con Can't rename the title of links
If the page title isn't correct/good for a link, there is no way for you to fix it.
Con Not really a bookmark tool but a tool to save webpages for later reading
A real bookmark tool has editable fields like title, url, folder, tags, notes. This saves webpages.
Con Deleted or edited tags do not go away from tag suggestions
For example, imagine you accidentally created a tag "US" instead of "USA," and saved some articles under "US." The unfortunate part is even if you edit the tag and rename it "USA" , the previous tag name will always appear in the suggested tags: so when saving an article, if you type US in the tag box, you will see two suggestions "US" and "USA."
Con Chrome addon doesn't let you open your library without saving current page first
Con Can't import Firefox bookmark tags
When importing bookmarks from Firefox, Pocket doesn't include the tags.
Con Chrome addon doesn't allow you to add tags with keyboard only (have to use mouse) while saving page
Con Ambiguous syntax
The Stylus syntax is very loose and that leads to ambiguity where some definitions can mean different things. For example, hashed objects cannot be used when you choose to omit colons in your definitions, because the dot notated object getters could also be a nested class selector. As a result, you lose being able to use hashed object getters if you decided to write Stylus without colons.
Con Community is weak, feels more like a pet project
Con Not under active development
Development of stylus has stagnated, there are lots of known bugs and it does not work well newer features like CSS Grid or custom poperties. See https://github.com/stylus/stylus/issues
Con Not as popular as Less and Sass
Stylus is younger than both Less and Sass, and not yet at the same level of popularity. As a result, Stylus currently has a smaller and less active community than the two more popular options.
Con Inconsistent style/flavour in different projects
Due to having such a loose syntax, the coding style can vary between different Stylus projects, making it hard to apply styles from other projects that use a different syntax style — at least if you care for consistency.
Con Heavily reliant on whitespaces
Stylus relies heavily on whitespaces to separate and define code blocks. While this makes for a cleaner syntax, it's also easier to make mistakes when indenting stuff, especially when working with someone else's code where you don't use the same style of indentation.
