Exploring CSS3

CSS3. Is it weird that even though I’m being taught about it, I feel like I know next to nothing about it in reality?

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. CSS is basically how websites are presented, visually. The 3 in CSS3 is the most current version of it. The borders around images, the way the site is laid out, the way the font looks, it’s all in the CSS. CSS provides the information to the web browser that tells the web page how to look to visitors. HTML controls the “structure” of a webpage, where CSS controls the visual aspect.

How well is CSS3 supported by browsers? Every website I look at says something a little different. One says there are some problems with older versions of Internet Explorer, and even some issues with the newest version of it. Sometimes, when writing CSS, you have to add little tags to the front of your coding to make sure it will work in a certain browser.

There’s even a website called css3test.com that shows you what features of CSS3 the browser you are currently on does and does not support. The website www.w3schools.com/cssref/css3_browsersupport.asp is a lot like the website above, only it covers all browsers, not just the one you’re on. One blog compares all of the browsers, and says that each browser supports most CSS3 and HTML5 elements, but many are missing a couple features. I guess it all comes down to really doing some checking while writing your CSS code.

What are some of the new properties in CSS3? There are a lot, but some of the websites I’ve looked on state things like the circle property, allowing you to create circles. There’s border radius, the ability to put drop shadows on boxes, drop shadows and outline features on text, new ways to deal with text overflow issues, ways to display footnotes, etc. There also are some problems with CSS3, but won’t there always be problems?

Which properties would be most likely to implement in the future, and why? I’m not sure how to answer this question. There are so many new features in CSS3, I don’t know them all, and I have no idea what new tools would be most likely implemented in the future. From what I’ve looked up, perhaps a tool directly built into CSS to help clean up your CSS coding would be helpful. There are a lot of websites and tools out there devoted to helping you improve and clean up your CSS coding with a copy/paste and the click of a button, so maybe some way to build a more comprehensive error checker into your CSS coding programs would be helpful.


Thanks for reading!