The proper chromatic number $\Vecχ(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the minimum $k$ such that there exists an orientation of the edges of $G$ with all vertex-outdegrees at most $k$ and such that for any adjacent vertices, the outdegrees are different. Two major conjectures about the proper chromatic number are resolved. First it is shown, that $\Vecχ(G)$ of any planar graph $G$ is bounded (in fact, it is at most 14). Secondly, it is shown that for every graph, $\Vecχ(G)$ is at most $O(\frac{r\log r}{\log\log r})+\tfrac{1}{2}\MAD(G)$, where $r=χ(G)$ is the usual chromatic number of the graph, and $\MAD(G)$ is the maximum average degree taken over all subgraphs of $G$. Several other related results are derived. Our proofs are based on a novel notion of fractional orientations.