Chapter 1. Introducing Less

Are you tired of writing the same old CSS styles for client websites only to find out that you're repeating yourself? Wish you could cut down on what you write and still produce the same results…?

Well, you can. Welcome to the world of CSS preprocessors, and in particular, Less! CSS preprocessors such as Less are designed to help you reorganize your styles to smaller, more manageable chunks of reusable code that you can store and reference as and when your projects demand.

Less, designed as a superset or extension of CSS, is very much about making your development work easier—it incorporates variables and functions that are more likely to be seen in scripting languages such as JavaScript while still compiling in valid CSS. While the initial thought of working with code might scare you, you'll see that Less is really just CSS, but with some additions to help make development easier. Less will help you cut down the development time, as you can reuse code from one project in another—how much is all up to you!

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• The roles of HTML and CSS, and the limitations of using CSS
• Why CSS preprocessors are needed
• Why you should use Less
• The advent of CSS4, and what this means for Less