How can I prevent CSS gradient banding?

You can yield slightly better results by making your gradient go from the first colour to transparent, with a background-color underneath for your second colour. I'd also recommend playing around with background-size for large gradients that stretch across the screen, so the gradient doesn't actually fill the whole screen.

I made a "scatter.png" to put with my gradient. Like this:

1. Open gimp
2. 100x100 image
3. Add alpha channel
4. Filters -> Noise -> Hurl... Accept defaults
5. Set opactity to 5%

6. Save and then add to gradient.

   background: url('/img/scatter.png'), linear-gradient(50deg,#d00 0,#300 100%);
   

It's a subtle effect on a subtle effect.

For a pure CSS answer you can use a blur filter to add blur to the css gradient and alleviate the banding. It can mean some rebuilding of the hierarchy to not blur the content and you need to hide the overflow to get crisp edges. Works really good on an animating background where the banding issue can be especially dire.

.blur{
  overflow:hidden;
  filter: blur(8px);
}

I know you won't like the sound of this, but the only real way right now to get a consistent cross-browser aesthetic in this case, is to use a repeating image.

If it's a simple linear gradient, then you only need it to be 1px wide and as high as the gradient, then make the background colour of the page as the final colour of the gradient so it runs smoothly. This will keep file size tiny.

If you want to reduce gradient bands in your image, use a PNG (not transparency) as I find these to be better suited than JPG's for this purpose.

In Adobe Fireworks, I would export this as a PNG-24.

Good luck.

http://codepen.io/anon/pen/JdEjWm

#gradient {
  position: absolute;
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  background: -webkit-gradient(linear, 0% 0%, 0% 100%, from(black), to(white));
  background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, black, white);
  background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, black, white);
  background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, black, white);
  background: -o-linear-gradient(top, black, white);
  background: linear-gradient(top, black, white);
}