dinky pocket bookCSS Selectors

Simple selectors

assume throughout that E and F are elements, they can have attribute foo e.g. <e foo="bar"> you can replace these with any elements or attributes.

In HTML, elements in CSS can be uppercase like these examples. In XHTML, elements must be lower case. Classes and IDs are always case sensitive

universal selector, match any element *

type (or element) selector E

ID selector an E element with ID equal to "myid", e.g. <e id="myid"> E#myid

class selector an E element whose class is "myclass", e.g. <e class="myclass"> E.myclass

Combinators & negation

descendant combinator to style an F element, which is a descendant of an E element E F

child combinator an F element which is the direct child of an E element E > F

adjacent sibling combinator an F element that is immediately preceded by an E element E + F

general sibling combinator an F element preceded at some point by an E element E ~ F

negation pseudo-class an E element that does not match simple selector s E:not(s)

Attribute selectors

element E with a "foo" attribute E[foo]

E’s attribute foo, value exactly equal to bar E[foo="bar"]

E’s attribute foo, value is whitespace-separated values, one of which is exactly "bar" E[foo~="bar"]

E’s attribute foo, value begins exactly "bar" E[foo^="bar"]

E’s attribute foo, value ends exactly "bar" E[foo$="bar"]

E’s attribute foo, value contains substring "bar" E[foo*="bar"]

E’s attribute foo has a hyphen-separated list of values beginning (from the left) with "en" E[foo|="en"]

Structural pseudo-classes

n can be replaced with an expression in all following cases n can be (odd), (even) or expressions such as (3n + 1)

an E element, the n-th child of its parent

E:nth-child(n)

an E element, the n-th child of its parent, counting from the last one E:nth-last-child(n)

an E element, the n-th sibling of its type E:nth-of-type(n)

an E element, the n-th sibling of its type, counting from the last one E:nth-last-of-type(n)

an E element that is the document root, i.e. html E:root

Structural pseudo-classes

an E element, first child of its parent E:first-child

an E element, first sibling of its type E:first-of-type

an E element, last child of its parent E:last-child

an E element, last sibling of its type E:last-of-type

an E element, only child of its parent E:only-child

an E element, only sibling of its type E:only-of-type

an E element that has no children (including text nodes) E:empty

Pseudo-classes

matches a link E when E is a link and not visited, hovered over focused on or active E:link

the href target of the link E has been visited E:visited

the link E has been activated E:active

any element E when hovered over with a mouse E:hover

the link or form control E when tabbed to with a keyboard E:focus

element E is the fragment in the referring URI E:target

an element of type E in language "fr" E:lang(fr)

Forms & Pseudo-elements

a user interface element E which is enabled E:enabled

a user interface element E which is disabled E:disabled

a user interface element E which is checked E:checked

the first formatted line of an E element E::first-line

the first formatted letter of an E element E::first-letter

generated content before an E element E::before

generated content after an E element E::after

http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-selectors/