xRefresh, Firefox soft css updates and SASS

So, I’ve just recently found the excellent tool of xRefresh (http://xrefresh.binaryage.com/). I really wanted the soft css updates to work with sass, but every time I would update my SASS file, the whole page would reload.

So I figured out I needed to exclude it:

xrefresh-server -e '^(\.(log|sass)'

Unfortunately, when I did that, it wouldn’t recognize the changes to the css anymore. I had forgotten that the SASS file is recompiled during the request. I hate to admit it, but it took me a while to figure that out. So, the solution is pretty simple — in another terminal window start the compass watcher

compass watch

Voila…your changes to your css appear without a complete reload of the page!