Saas is available on Mac, Windows and Linux.

You can find implementations of Sass written in programming languages like

Java, Python, PHP, JavaScript, and others.

The original Sass was written in the Ruby programming language, so

installing via a RubyGem is one of the most common ways to get Sass up and

running on your machine.

A gem is what Ruby uses to install and manage dependencies.

It's a package containing all the information and scripts necessary

to install and run a Ruby based program or library on your computer.

For example the Sass gen includes all the tools needed to compile Sass to CSS.

In this course we're going to use the Ruby version of Sass or

Ruby Sass as it's often called.

To use Ruby Sass you need Ruby installed on your computer.

Now, Mac's come pre-installed with Ruby but windows machines do not, so

you'll need to install Ruby before installing Sass.

Now, don't worry, you won't need to install anything for this course.

Sass is already set up and ready to use in workspaces.

To quote along, launch the workspace with this video or if you'd like to use your

own text editor, download the project files and open the director of this video.

If you want to get up and running with Sass on your own computer,

the Sass documentation includes helpful instructions on installing Sass.

I've posted the link in the teacher's notes,

along with other resources to help you get started.

Normally you'll use a command line application like the Windows command

prompt, the Mac terminal or a Linux shell, to install Sass on your computer.

By learning the command gem Install Sass.

Again the Sass Gem is installed in workspaces, so

we're ready to start using Sass, but before we start, it's important you know

that the Sass pre-processor allows two different syntaxes.

There's the Sass syntax, also known as the indented syntax, and

it's the original syntax of sass.

And SCSS, known as Sassy CSS.

This is the latest generation of Sass.

To see the differences between the two syntaxes have a look at the files

in your workspace.

Notice how one file uses the .sass extension and the other .scss.

Open input.sass and you'll see why it's called the indented syntax.

Notice how it's like CSS without any of the curly braces and semicolons.

Instead it uses strict indentation to specify each decoration and the rule.

Open input.scss and you should see a more familiar syntax.

It's the usual CSS syntax you know and love.

CSS is fully compatible with the syntax of SCSS.

That's what's the most popular of the two syntaxes and the one we'll use in this

course because you don't have to change the way you write CSS.

By just writing plain CSS syntax

instead a .scss file you're writing totally valid SCSS.

In fact, you could change a style sheet extension from .css to .scss and

it will just work, off you'll go using Sass.

However, keep in mind that the indented

Sass syntax is not compatible with CSS syntax, so

if you tried to write regular CSS inside a .sass file the code will produce errors.

Even though we're using a CSS friendly syntax here in input.scss.

The browser still doesn't understand this file written in SCSS.

So we need to translate or compile this code into a regular CSS file.

I'll teach you how to do that in the next video.