As web designers, we are constantly on the lookout for new design technologies that will allow us the freedom to explore our creative skills. Improving user experience and the overall look and feel of a website is important to us, not only because it's important for business advancement, but also SEO.
With CSS making its way into web designing, it gave us the much-awaited opportunity to experiment with various design styles. Now with CSS3, things look promising with increased flexibility of how websites could be presented. Of course, all browsers do not support CCS3, but then, cross-browser compatibility hinders a lot more than just design displays. Besides, the ease with which we can implement effects using CSS3 is a far cry for something like JavaScript plugin.

Understandably, CSS3 is gaining in popularity. It offers many new exciting features that can make your website appear supremely attractive. Although, not all of these features are essential to website functionality, users still expect designs to be pretty and professional. For example, a basic feature like menus can be made with rounded edges and submenus can have tabs, descriptions, etc. None of this is important to navigation, but overall, it makes a normally rectangular static menu look appealing.

Let's us now take a look at some of the new CSS3 features that can take your website's existing design a notch higher:

1.    Multiple Backgrounds – Backgrounds should be attractive without overpowering business content like information, images, order buttons, etc. CSS3's new features allow the designer to experiment with fresh, innovative backgrounds that improve the look of the site without taking away its branding quality.

2.    Box-Shadows – The main content area could be made to appear like its fading or sliding into the website, or it may appear only upon hover. With CSS3, box-shadows are easy to implement without using a JavaScript plugin or creating duplicate images.

3.    Shadow Texts – CSS3 allows implementation (drop) of a shadow beneath the html text so it appears stylish without being difficult to read.

4.    Image Borders – With CSS3, designers can get rid of the plain, dull borders to replace with an image border that can be styled to compliment the image and enhance the overall effect of the page.

5.    Rounded Corners – With CSS3, sharp corners can be replaced with softer rounds that look professional yet appealing.

6.    Font Additions – CSS3 allows easy font additions. A new font file can be uploaded to the server and linked to the CSS file to create a font family.

7.    Opacity – You don't have to use a CSS filter or create a new image for this any longer. With CSS3, a simple input of an opacity number can get you the desired effect.

8.    Transform – Now you can choose the size of your hover area through this CSS3 feature.

9.    RGBA Coloring – You choose the opacity and amount of red, green and blue to suit your design without using any browser extensions. The days of hex colors are clearly over with CSS3.

10.  Resize – This CSS3 feature allows users to resize elements using a resizing triangle.

Despite the many advantages of CSS, it continues to implement filters to showcase changes on screen. CSS can still be incorrectly interpreted on browsers like Chrome and Firefox. While some designers have excluded the use of CSS completely, there are those that continue to use it to fantastic results.