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CSS

Posted by Pedro Lopes
Pedro Lopes
4,281 Points

What is the difference between background | background-color?

For example:

body{background-color:orange;}

or

body{background:orange;}

3 Answers

David Bloomfield
David Bloomfield
11,622 Points

As Jonathan and Stuart said, one is a specific property and the other is used for CSS shorthand.

E.g.

background-color: orange;
background-image: url('images/yourimage.png');
background-position: 0 50%;
background-repeat: no-repeat;

Can be written

background: orange url('images/yourimage.png') 0 0 no-repeat;

Thanks David

Jonathan Rhodes
Jonathan Rhodes
8,086 Points
Jonathan Rhodes
Jonathan Rhodes
8,086 Points

background-color is a specific property in the wider property of background. With background, you are not limited to just colors, you can also place images and linear-gradients together, as well as specify positioning. Basically it's a shorthand for declaring all aspects of the background.

Stuart Wright
Stuart Wright
41,120 Points
Stuart Wright
Stuart Wright
41,120 Points

You will likely learn more about the difference in future Treehouse courses, but the background property can be used as shorthand to set several different properties relating to the background in one line of code. For example, you can use the background property to set an image, the position of the background image, and whether or not it repeats. The background-color property sets exactly one property, the background color.