CSS3 Pushing the Limits

Introduction

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a core requirement in any web designer's toolkit, providing lifeless HTML with heart and soul since its inception in 1996. CSS has come a long way since then, though, and with the latest incarnation, CSS3, now boasts a vast range of impressive features that really push the boundaries of its status as a simple styling language. It doesn't just paint the walls of your web pages anymore; now, the walls move, they adjust their shapes, the paint changes color, and all these effects are achieved without reliance on the bigger and smarter cousin that is JavaScript.

What Is CSS3?

CSS3 has received an incredible amount of coverage across the web, quickly transforming it into one of the industry's most frequently used buzzwords, but it's soon to be eclipsed and outdated by CSS4, right? Wrong!

In contrast to the preceding versions of CSS (1 and 2.1), CSS3 is not one giant specification that will eventually progress to CSS4 and beyond. Instead, the decision was made to modularize the entire specification, resulting in a comprehensive collection of various modules that all fall within the bracket of CSS3. Each of these modules is now free to progress independently at its own pace, without the possibility of being held back by other features.

The modules that simply further develop features from CSS 1 and CSS 2.1 are known as Level 3 modules, whereas brand new features and concepts form Level 1 modules. They will eventually progress to Level 4 and ...