Other special CSS selectors

Special selector notations.

What about the Universal Selector

  • The * (asterisk) selector means "anything," so if you use:
    *.myclass {color:green;}
    /* which is the same as */
    .myclass {color:green;}
    the style will take affect on all the element with the class='myclass' implemented in your web page.
  • You can use the * (asterisk) selector as:
    * {color:blue;}
    in your style sheet, and all type will be blue except where you specify it to be different in other rules.
  • An interesting use of the * (asterisk) selector is as the inverse of the child selector a not-a-child selector, if you will.
    h2 * em {font-weight:bold;}
    Here, any em tag that is at least a grandchild of the h2 tag, but not a child, is selected; it doesn't matter what the em's parent tag is.
    Example of the Universal selector:
    <html>
      <head>
        <style type="text/css">
          p * em {color:green}
        </style>
      </head>
      <body>
         <p>This <span><em>em element</em></span> is inside an  p element,
         but is not a
        direct child of the p element so it will be green.</p>
        <p>This <em>em element</em> is a direct child of the p
       element and will not be green.</p>
      </body>
    </html>

What about the Adjacent Sibling Selector.

  • This rule, with a + (pluss) selects a element that follows a specific sibling element.
  • Sibling elements are at the same level in the markup hierarchy that is, they share the same parent element.
    h1 + p {color: red}
    Example of the Adjacent Sibling selector:
    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
    <html>
      <head>
        <style type="text/css">
          h1 + p {color: red}
        </style>
      </head>
      <body>
       <h1>All about siblings selectors.</h1>
       <p>There must be at least two selectors, with a + sign before the last one.</p>
       <p>The targeted selector will only be
       affected if it is a sibling to, and preceded by,
       the one before the + sign.</p>
      </body>
    </html>
    Note: For Adjacent Sibling selector to work in IE a <!DOCTYPE> must be declared.

What about the Attribute Selectors.

  • Attribute selectors use the attributes of the element. They are primarily used in XML but have their uses in HTML too.
  • If you want the img (image) elements with a title attribute to appear with a blue, 2-pixel border around so you can express in this way:
    img[title] {border: 2px solid blue;}
  • If you want paragraph elements with an attribute id='beta' to be written in red you can express it in this way:
    p[id='beta'] {color: red;}
    Example of the Attribute selector:
    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
    <html>
      <head>
        <style type="text/css">
          h2[title] {color: red}
          p[id='beta'] {color: green}
        </style>
      </head>
      <body>
       <h2 title='The red color has nothing to do with the tiltle contents'>
                  This text will show in red color.</h2>
       <p id='beta'>This text will show in green color
                  as the attribute id='beta'.</p>
       <p id='alpha'>This text will show in default color
                  as the attribute id='alpha'.</p>
       <p >This text will show in default color as this element has no id.</p>
      </body>
    </html>
    Note: For Attribute selector selector to work in IE a <!DOCTYPE> must be declared.

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