What role do CSS preprocessors play in Liferay's front-end development?

CSS preprocessors play a significant role in enhancing the development workflow of front-end styles in Liferay by providing improved organization and advanced features that go beyond basic CSS. With preprocessors like SASS, LESS, or Stylus, developers can utilize variables, nested rules, mixins, and functions. These features enable a more structured and modular approach to styling, allowing for easier maintenance, reusability of code, and overall more efficient development processes.

For instance, developers can define variables for colors, fonts, or sizes, making it easy to maintain a consistent design across the application. Nesting allows styles to be written in a hierarchical manner, which reflects the HTML structure and aids in readability. Additionally, mixins can help in avoiding code duplication, thereby promoting DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principles in CSS.

The other options do not accurately represent the capabilities or the intent of CSS preprocessors in the context of Liferay's front-end development. They do not restrict styling options, compile only JavaScript, or manage server-side rendering, as those functionalities fall under other tools or frameworks commonly used in web development. Thus, the focus on improved organization and advanced features makes the option about CSS preprocessors fully aligned with their purpose in Liferay’s ecosystem.