Use Cascading Style Sheets Selectors

By Nicholas Chase
2004-06-18

Summary

This article looked at the different types of selectors available within the CSS2 Recommendation. Browser support for some is limited, but CSS is designed for graceful degradation; a page should still be legible and usable if a style isn't applied. However, you should always test pages in all target browsers.

Resources
Review the Cascading Style
Sheets 2 Recommendation from the W3C.

Get up to speed on CSS by reading the Introduction to Cascading Style Sheets: Type tutorial (developerWorks, September 2001).

Read Molly E. Holzschlag's article on using class selectors to your advantage, Design Web pages with class (developerWorks, September 1999).

Learn more about CSS at the House of Style.

Get a guide to support for various CSS1 and CSS2 selectors and properties in various browsers.

Find more XML resources on the developerWorks XML zone.

Tutorial Pages:
» The basic page and the universal selector
» Type selectors
» Class selectors
» ID selectors
» Family relationships: descendants, children, and siblings
» Pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements
» Summary

First published by IBM developerWorks

Related Tutorials:
» Planning Your Stylesheet - The Definitive Guide
» CSS Shorthand Properties
» Print Stylesheet - The Definitive Guide
» Using CSS Selectors to Highlight Unedited Form Fields
» An Introduction to CSS
» Overlapping tabbed navigation in CSS