Difference between CSS and CSS3
Differences between CSS and CSS3
CSS
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. Its primary purpose is to provide style and functionality to web pages. CSS provides properties such as color, layout, backgrounds, fonts, and borders. The features of CSS allow for better content accessibility, increased flexibility and control, and standardized presentation characteristics.
CSS3
CSS3, short for Cascading Style Sheets Level 3, is an advanced version of CSS. It’s used to structure, style, and format web pages. CSS3 adds several new features and is supported by all modern web browsers. The most important feature of CSS3 is that it breaks down the CSS standard into separate modules, making it easier to learn and use.
The new features of CSS3 are as follows:
- Combinators: CSS3 has a new universal sibling combinator that matches sibling elements via the tilde (~) combinator.
- CSS Selectors: CSS3’s selectors are much more advanced than the simple selectors provided by CSS, and are described as a series of easy-to-use and simple selectors.
- Pseudo-elements: A large number of new pseudo-elements have been added to CSS3 to facilitate in-depth styling. There’s even a new double-colon convention::.
- Border Styles: The latest CSS3 also has new border style features like border-radius, image-slice, image-source, and a “width stretch” value.
- Background Style Properties: CSS3 has added new features like background-clip, size, style, and origin properties.
Differences between CSS and CSS3.
| Number | CSS | CSS3 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | CSS allows for positioning of text and objects. | CSS3 can make web pages more attractive and takes less time to create. CSS3 is backwards compatible with CSS. |
| 2 | CSS does not support responsive design. | CSS3 is the latest version, so it supports responsive design. |
| 3 | CSS cannot be broken down into modules. | CSS3 can be broken down into modules. |
| 4 | Using CSS, you cannot create 3D animations and transitions. | But with CSS3, you can do all kinds of animations and transitions because it supports animations and 3D transitions. |
| 5 | Compared to CSS3, CSS is very slow. | CSS3 is faster than CSS. |
| 6 | In CSS, we have a standard set of colors that only use basic color schemes. | CSS3 has a good set of HSL RGBA, HSLA, and gradient colors. |
| 7 | In CSS, we can only use single blocks of text. | But in CSS3, we can use multi-column blocks of text. |
| 8 | CSS does not support media queries. | But CSS3 does support media queries. |
| 9 | CSS code is not supported by all types of modern browsers. | As the latest version, CSS3 code is supported by all modern browsers. |
| 10 | In CSS, designers had to manually develop smooth gradients and corners. | But CSS3 provides advanced code for setting smooth gradients and corners. |
| 11 | There are no special effects like shadow text or text animation in CSS. These animations are coded in jQuery and JavaScript. | CSS3 has many advanced features, such as text shadows, visual effects, and various font styles and colors. |
| 12 | In CSS, users can add background colors to list items and lists, set https://coder-cafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/images for list items, and more. | CSS3 defines a special display property for lists. Even list items have a counter reset property. |
| 13 | CSS was developed in 1996. | CSS3 is the latest version of CSS, released in 2005. |
| 14 | CSS is memory-intensive. | Compared to CSS, CSS3 has very low memory consumption. |