CSS color vs. background-color vs. background?

Question

In HTML when do I use color, and what is the difference between background-color and also the background tag?

What are the differences?

Answer 1

color is referring to the text color in that element.

background-color refers to the background color

background is shorthand to combine many background tags into one line.

background: #ffffff url("img_tree.png") no-repeat right top; 

Combines color, image and background image properties in the one line instead of typing our each style individually.

w3schools

Answer 2

I will give you a example using this html element:

<span class="value"> This is my text </span>

.value { color: red, background-color: black}

The CSS color is used to change the text color of a html element. In this example "This is my text" would be red. The CSS background-color is used to change the background color so in this case you would get a black box with red text inside it. Finally the background is used to set all the background properties in one declaration. For example:

background: #00ff00 url("smiley.gif") no-repeat fixed center;

This changes the background color, adds the image "smiley.gif" to the background and it centers the image, it doesnt repeat the image if it has the space.