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CSS Selectors: A CSS Selector Selects The HTML Element(s) You Want To Style

CSS selectors allow users to select and style specific elements on an HTML page. There are five main categories of CSS selectors: simple selectors select elements by name, id, or class, combinator selectors select elements based on their relationship, pseudo-class selectors select elements based on a certain state, pseudo-element selectors select and style parts of elements, and attribute selectors select elements based on attributes or values. Common simple selectors include the element selector which selects elements by name, the id selector which selects a unique element using its id attribute, and the class selector which selects elements using a class attribute.

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Sudhesh VS
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32 views

CSS Selectors: A CSS Selector Selects The HTML Element(s) You Want To Style

CSS selectors allow users to select and style specific elements on an HTML page. There are five main categories of CSS selectors: simple selectors select elements by name, id, or class, combinator selectors select elements based on their relationship, pseudo-class selectors select elements based on a certain state, pseudo-element selectors select and style parts of elements, and attribute selectors select elements based on attributes or values. Common simple selectors include the element selector which selects elements by name, the id selector which selects a unique element using its id attribute, and the class selector which selects elements using a class attribute.

Uploaded by

Sudhesh VS
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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CSS Selectors

A CSS selector selects the HTML element(s) you want to style

CSS selectors are used to "find" (or select) the HTML elements you want to style.

We can divide CSS selectors into five categories:

 Simple selectors (select elements based on name, id, class)


 Combinator selectors (select elements based on a specific relationship between them)
 Pseudo-class selectors (select elements based on a certain state)
 Pseudo-elements selectors (select and style a part of an element)
 Attribute selectors (select elements based on an attribute or attribute value)

This page will explain the most basic CSS selectors.

The CSS element Selector

The element selector selects HTML elements based on the element name.

Here, all <p> elements on the page will be center-aligned, with a red text color:

p {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}

The CSS id Selector

The id selector uses the id attribute of an HTML element to select a specific element.The id of an
element is unique within a page, so the id selector is used to select one unique element!

To select an element with a specific id, write a hash (#) character, followed by the id of the
element.

The CSS rule below will be applied to the HTML element with id="para1":

<html>
<head>
<style>
#para1 {
color: red;
}
</style>
</head>

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<body>
<p id="para1">Hello World!</p>
<p>This paragraph is not affected by the style.</p>
text-align: center;
</body>
</html>
Note: An id name cannot start with a number!

The CSS class Selector

The class selector selects HTML elements with a specific class attribute.

To select elements with a specific class, write a period (.) character, followed by the class name.

In this example all HTML elements with class="center" will be red and center-aligned:
<html>
<head>
<style>
.center {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1 class="center">Red and center-aligned heading</h1>
<p class="center">Red and center-aligned paragraph.</p>
</body>
</html>

You can also specify that only specific HTML elements should be affected by a class.

In this example only <p> elements with class="center" will be red and center-aligned:

p.center {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}

HTML elements can also refer to more than one class.

In this example the <p> element will be styled according to class="center" and to class="large":

<html>
<head>
<style>
p.center {
text-align: center;

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color: red;
}
p.large {
font-size: 300%;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1 class="center">This heading will not be affected</h1>
<p class="center">This paragraph will be red and center-aligned.</p>
<p class="center large">This paragraph will be red, center-aligned, and in a large font-
size.</p>
</body>
</html>

Note: A class name cannot start with a number!


The CSS Grouping Selector

The grouping selector selects all the HTML elements with the same style definitions.

Look at the following CSS code (the h1, h2, and p elements have the same style definitions):

h1 {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}

h2 {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}

p {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}

It will be better to group the selectors, to minimize the code.

To group selectors, separate each selector with a comma.

In this example we have grouped the selectors from the code above:

h1, h2, p {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}

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CSS Comments

Comments are used to explain the code, and may help when you edit the source code at a later
date.

Comments are ignored by browsers.

A CSS comment is placed inside the <style> element, and starts with /* and ends with */:

/* This is a single-line comment */


p {
color: red;
}

You can add comments wherever you want in the code:

p {
color: red; /* Set text color to red */
}

Comments can also span multiple lines:

/* This is
a multi-line
comment */

p {
color: red;
}

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