Why Study CSS3

Today we are going to look at the benefits of CSS3 Web Design And Why you should Study! Learn CSS3 so you don’t fall behind your competitors.

This post is part of the Why Study Series:

1. Why Study Web Design
2. Why Study WordPress
3. Why Study HTML5
4. Why Study CSS3
5. Why Study Mobile Website Design
6. Why Study jQuery
7. Why Study PHP

CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheet 3) is a style sheet language that specifies style formatting for websites, such as color, font size, and layout. It is most commonly used on HTML pages. Unlike HTML, CSS focuses on the style and design of the website rather than the content. The main utility of CSS is making aesthetic changes to a website without rewriting the code on every single page.

Simplified Design Elements

One of the benefits of CSS3 web design is that, though it’s powerful, it’s also a relatively simple web language. What makes it so simple is that it is split into logical and user-friendly modules. The most common (and important) CSS3 modules are: backgrounds and borders, text effects, animations, layouts, and user interface. Within each of these modules is a set of customizable functions, which allows for greater flexibility in custom development.  providing for the optimum user experience and a number of immersive elements.

CSS2 appeared back in 1998 and since then a lot has happened on the internet. Its only revision was made in 2011, CSS2.1, but experts in the industry say it was only a matter of time until CSS3 should have been released, as the features it comes with are entirely necessary and were missed during the past years. What many people didn’t know about CSS3 was that its development started only one year after the submission of its previous version. So the W3C has been working on this improved version since 1999, for more than 12 years until the first CSS3 stable version was released.

Although it sounds like there is a big difference between CSS2 and CSS3 (which is quite true), all modern browsers were quite quick to adopt the new addition to the W3C family. All major browsers support most CSS3 features that are currently available. As with HTML5, the Consortium still considers CSS3 to be under continuous development and it is very unlikely for it to get a final version, for the same reasons HTML5 will probably not. With the web requirements, and the industry in general, changing so fast, coding needs to move forward at the same pace.

Main differences

Maybe the biggest difference between CSS2 and CSS3 is the separation of modules. While in the previous version everything was a large single specification defining different features, CSS3 is divided into several documents which are called modules. Every single module has new capabilities, without hurting the compatibility of the previous stable release. When we talk about modules, we can name more than fifty of them, however four of these have been published as formal recommendations. The big four is comprised of the following:

• Media Queries (published in 2012)
• Namespaces (published in 2011)
• Selectors Level 3 (published in 2011)
• Color (published in 2011)

The media queries might well be the most important addition to CSS. What it does is simple: it allows certain conditions to be applied to different stylesheets, making websites fluid and fit all kinds of screen sizes. Media queries allow developers to tailor to different resolutions without having to change or remove content.

New pseudo-classes

The arrival of CSS3 brings us a bunch of new pseudo-classes, including structural ones, that target elements based on their position in the document and relation to different other elements.

• :only-child – in case you have an element in the document tree that is the only child of its parent, it can be targeted by this pseudo-class.
• :empty – targets elements that don’t have any children or any text, for example an empty element such as <p></p>.
• :nth-child(n) – it takes advantage of numeric (n) values and targets child elements in relation to their position within the parent. To give you a precise example, a list of blog comments would probably look more appealing with alternating background colors – this can be done using this pseudo-class.
• :first-of-type – this targets the first of a specific type of element within a parent, and is the opposite of :last-of-type.
• :first-child – targets the first child element in a parent, regardless of its type. It is the opposite of :last-child.
• :not(s) – this one targets elements that are not matched by the specified selector (s).
• :root – this one targets the root element of a document.

There are more pseudo-classes added to the new CSS3.

CSS3 Web Design Versus Other Versions of CSS

There are a variety of CSS3-generating tools that will help you accomplish small web tasks without writing a single word of code.

CSS is designed to be “backwards compatible,” which means CSS3 is fully compatible with other versions of CSS. The main difference between CC3 and prior versions is that the other versions did not contain CSS3’s modules. Each module contains new features and capabilities, and a more user-friendly, organized experience.

CSS3 Web Design and Your Web Site

On top of great content, it is of the utmost importance that your website be attractive, well laid-out, and easy to navigate. CSS3 is a great resource for accomplishing this critical goal. Another benefit of CSS3 is that, while it is important for a developer to design your site and provide ongoing support, certain elements can be tweaked or updated without needing to have a significant background in web design. For example, there are a variety of CSS3-generating tools that will help you accomplish small web tasks without writing a single word of code. This fits in perfectly with an on-the-go or do-it-yourself business owner who needs quick fixes to simple problems.

Where To Study

Web designers wanting to learn the power behind HTML5 And CSS3. Here at Web Design Academy we offer the right courses for you, with hands-on training working with basic through advanced techniques to get the most out of your experience. You will learn how to use HTML5 and CSS3 to improve your current web design skill-set.

This class also provides the web professional with the ability to control the rendering, e.g. fonts, colours, leading, margins, typefaces, and other aspects of style of a web document without compromising its structure using Cascading Style Sheets.
View Course Information Here or Download Info Sheet Here