CSS color vs. background-color vs. background?

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.

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.

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