What is CSS3?
CSS3 developers are simply front-end developers who specialize in using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Everything from the color and shape of your site navigation buttons to the typography of your blog text to the overall layout of your website falls under the domain of the CSS3 developer.
How do you hire a CSS3 developer?
You can source CSS3 development talent on Upwork by following these three steps:
- Write a project description. You’ll want to determine your scope of work and the skills and requirements you are looking for in CSS3 developers.
- Post it on Upwork. Once you’ve written a project description, post it to Upwork. Simply follow the prompts to help you input the information you collected to scope out your project.
- Shortlist and interview CSS3 developers. Once the proposals start coming in, create a shortlist of the professionals you want to interview.
Of these three steps, your project description is where you will determine your scope of work and the specific type of CSS3 you need to complete your project.
How much does it cost to hire a CSS3 developer?
Rates can vary due to many factors, including expertise and experience, location, and market conditions.
- An experienced CSS3 developer may command higher fees but also work faster, have more-specialized areas of expertise, and deliver higher-quality work.
- A contractor who is still in the process of building a client base may price their CSS3 development services more competitively.
Rates typically charged by CSS3 developers on Upwork are:
- Beginner: $19 per hour
- Intermediate: $37 per hour
- Advanced: $80 per hour
Which one is right for you will depend on the specifics of your project.
How do you write a CSS3 development job post?
Your job post is your chance to describe your project scope, budget, and talent needs. Although you don’t need a full job description as you would when hiring an employee, aim to provide enough detail for a contractor to know if they’re the right fit for the project.
Job post title
Create a simple title that describes exactly what you’re looking for. The idea is to target the keywords that your ideal candidate is likely to type into a job search bar to find your project. Here are some sample CSS3 development job post titles:
- CSS3 developer needed to create custom styles for a WordPress site
- Seeking for a CSS3 developer experienced with Foundation and Sass
- Experienced web designer needed to design HTML/CSS3 web templates
Project description
An effective CSS3 developer job post should include:
- Scope of work: From style sheets to front-end features, list all the deliverables you’ll need.
- Project length: Your job post should indicate whether this is a smaller or larger project.
- Background: If you prefer experience with certain industries, web technologies, or developer tools, mention this here.
- Budget: Set a budget and note your preference for hourly rates vs. fixed-price contracts.
CSS3 developer job responsibilities
Here are some examples of CSS3 developer job responsibilities:
- Translate web designs into front-end features
- Build and maintain reusable style sheets and templates
- Write testable, reusable, well-documented CSS3 code
CSS3 developer job requirements and qualifications
Be sure to include any requirements and qualifications you’re looking for in a CSS3 developer. Here are some examples:
- Web fundamentals such as CSS3, JavaScript, and HTML
- Front-end CSS3 frameworks such as Bootstrap and Foundation
- CSS3 preprocessors such as Less and Sass
- Web and graphic design
CSS vs. CSS3
First, let’s review some CSS basics. Within a site’s code, CSS works in tandem with HTML to give a site its static structure and style. While HTML defines what elements are on a page, CSS defines how those HTML elements appear.
So, what’s new with css3?
CSS3 is the latest standard for the CSS language, under development since 2005. It’s backward-compatible with older versions of CSS and has new properties that debug previous quirks and extend CSS2 features, and it’s even got some JavaScript-like capabilities. CSS3 has also addressed a number of mobile development concerns, accounting for responsive design and making up for issues caused by Adobe Flash incompatibility on mobile devices. In combination with JavaScript, CSS3 has a lot of the functionality of Flash now–animation- and interactivity-wise.
Here are seven major things that differentiate CSS3 from its predecessors.
1. Mobile-first mentality
CSS3 inherently supports responsive design and is equipped to handle media queries. Media queries are calls made by the code to determine what device and size screen a user is viewing the site on. This adds a whole new responsive design capability to the CSS repertoire.
2. Module-based code
One of the biggest developments is that CSS3 is split into “modules.” All of the old CSS specifications have been migrated over to the new version and divided into smaller pieces (with some new modules added as well).
Other CSS3 modules include:
- Selectors: Developers can edit elements by name, class, type, attribute, and more.
- The Box Model module: This describes an approach to creating consistency between HTML elements on a page, or “boxes.” By applying margins, borders, and padding to a box’s content, developers can clear area around an element, give it borders, and more.
- Backgrounds and borders: With better control of the treatments of element borders and page backgrounds, CSS3 also enables rounded corners on boxes and drop shadows. Before CSS3, backgrounds had to be achieved with images, which added to a page’s file size and load time.
- Text effects: CSS3 includes shadow effects, text overflow (which hides text that gets too long for its element), word breaking (automatically breaking text so it fits within a box), and text wrapping–all things that save designers lots of formatting time.
3. Web font support gives designers access to way more than just “web safe” fonts
Before CSS3, designers could only use “web safe” fonts to be 100 percent sure that the fonts would always display the same on everyone’s machine. Web safe fonts are fonts that every single computer has installed and recognizes. If a designer used common fonts like Times New Roman or Arial, they could pretty much guarantee that any user would view their site as it was intended. However, if they wanted to use a rarer font, if it wasn’t supported by a user’s machine, it would default back to a web safe font.
Designers can now run web fonts in CSS3, special fonts like those available via Google Fonts and Typecast. These fonts can either be downloaded onto a server and run through the CSS code, or accessed directly from its source via a script, which is called right within the CSS code. This has opened up a world of possibilities for designers.
4. It enables faster development and faster load times
What used to require background images, CSS3 can now achieve with visual enhancements, which saves developers time in production. This cuts down on calls and load times for numerous images because these effects are all built into the code. Also, pages load faster thanks to overall smaller file sizes and fewer calls.
5. Create 2D and 3D transformations, animations, and transitions
These effects allow elements on a page to rotate, grow, shrink, flip, or translate into a different color. For the first time, elements created in CSS can move on screen without requiring any JavaScript or Flash code. With transitions, an element can seamlessly change size and color. You can set a duration for a transition, e.g. creating a button that slowly expands and changes color when you mouse over it.
6. New colors and image effects
CSS3 supports new colors (RGBA, HSL, HSLA) and gradient colors, and allows for adjustments to opacity. Another biggie is its support of rounded image corners, an effect that required a lot of formatting and Photoshop work to achieve before.
7. Box-sizing has fixed some annoying alignment problems
Box-sizing allows developers to get the sizing of elements right without having to subtract dimensions for padding and borders. With the box-sizing property, the padding and border are included in the height and width.