In this chapter, we started with a brief look at the role of HTML and CSS in designing websites, and covered a few of the limitations that CSS has when styling elements on web pages.

We then talked about how CSS preprocessors can help solve some of these issues; we covered the critical question that people will often ask, which is, why we should need to use them when we are perfectly au fait with writing valid CSS. We then introduced Less as one of the preprocessors available and as a possible solution to some of the issues we face with CSS.

We then rounded up the chapter with a look at some of the reasons why Less should become part of your development toolkit, as well as some of the features available for helping you to manage your CSS development. In the next chapter, we'll start to take a more in-depth look at the syntax of Less and how we can compile it to create valid CSS.