Johann Sebastian Bach was a prolific composer.
To set the text color of the H1 elements to red, you can write the
following CSS rules:
h1 { color: red }
A CSS rule consists of two main parts: selector ('h1') and declaration
('color: red'). In HTML, element names are case-insensitive so 'h1'
works just as well as 'H1'. The declaration has two parts: property
('color') and value ('red'). While the example above tries to
influence only one of the properties needed for rendering an HTML
document, it qualifies as a style sheet on its own. Combined with
other style sheets (one fundamental feature of CSS is that style
sheets are combined) it will determine the final presentation of the
document.
The HTML 4 specification defines how style sheet rules may be
specified for HTML documents: either within the HTML document, or via
an external style sheet. To put the style sheet into the document, use
the STYLE element:
Bach's home page
Bach's home page
Johann Sebastian Bach was a prolific composer.
For maximum flexibility, we recommend that authors specify external
style sheets; they may be changed without modifying the source HTML
document, and they may be shared among several documents. To link to
an external style sheet, you can use the LINK element:
Bach's home page
Bach's home page
Johann Sebastian Bach was a prolific composer.
The LINK element specifies:
* the type of link: to a "stylesheet".
* the location of the style sheet via the "href" attribute.
* the type of style sheet being linked: "text/css".
To show the close relationship between a style sheet and the
structured markup, we continue to use the STYLE element in this
tutorial. Let's add more colors:
Bach's home page
Bach's home page
Johann Sebastian Bach was a prolific composer.
The style sheet now contains four rules: the first two set the color
and background of the BODY element (it's a good idea to set the text
color and background color together), while the last two set the color
and the background of the H1 element. Since no color has been
specified for the P element, it will inherit the color from its parent
element, namely BODY. The H1 element is also a child element of BODY
but the second rule overrides the inherited value. In CSS there are
often such conflicts between different values, and this specification
describes how to resolve them.
CSS 2.1 has more than 90 properties, including 'color'. Let's look at
some of the others:
Bach's home page
Bach's home page
Johann Sebastian Bach was a prolific composer.
The first thing to notice is that several declarations are grouped
within a block enclosed by curly braces ({...}), and separated by
semicolons, though the last declaration may also be followed by a
semicolon.
The first declaration on the BODY element sets the font family to
"Gill Sans". If that font isn't available, the user agent (often
referred to as a "browser") will use the 'sans-serif' font family
which is one of five generic font families which all users agents
know. Child elements of BODY will inherit the value of the
'font-family' property.
The second declaration sets the font size of the BODY element to 12
points. The "point" unit is commonly used in print-based typography to
indicate font sizes and other length values. It's an example of an
absolute unit which does not scale relative to the environment.
The third declaration uses a relative unit which scales with regard to
its surroundings. The "em" unit refers to the font size of the
element. In this case the result is that the margins around the BODY
element are three times wider than the font size.
2.2 A brief CSS 2.1 tutorial for XML
This section is non-normative.
CSS can be used with any structured document format, for example with
applications of the eXtensible Markup Language [XML10]. In fact, XML
depends more on style sheets than HTML, since authors can make up
their own elements that user agents don't know how to display.
Here is a simple XML fragment:
Fredrick the Great meets BachJohann Nikolaus Forkel
One evening, just as he was getting his
flute ready and his
musicians were assembled, an officer brought him a list of
the strangers who had arrived.
To display this fragment in a document-like fashion, we must first
declare which elements are inline-level (i.e., do not cause line
breaks) and which are block-level (i.e., cause line breaks).
INSTRUMENT { display: inline }
ARTICLE, HEADLINE, AUTHOR, PARA { display: block }
The first rule declares INSTRUMENT to be inline and the second rule,
with its comma-separated list of selectors, declares all the other
elements to be block-level. Element names in XML are case-sensitive,
so a selector written in lowercase (e.g. 'instrument') is different
from uppercase (e.g. 'INSTRUMENT').
One way of linking a style sheet to an XML document is to use a
processing instruction:
Fredrick the Great meets BachJohann Nikolaus Forkel
One evening, just as he was getting his
flute ready and his
musicians were assembled, an officer brought him a list of
the strangers who had arrived.
A visual user agent could format the above example as:
Example rendering [D]
Notice that the word "flute" remains within the paragraph since it is
the content of the inline element INSTRUMENT.
Still, the text isn't formatted the way you would expect. For example,
the headline font size should be larger than then the rest of the
text, and you may want to display the author's name in italic:
INSTRUMENT { display: inline }
ARTICLE, HEADLINE, AUTHOR, PARA { display: block }
HEADLINE { font-size: 1.3em }
AUTHOR { font-style: italic }
ARTICLE, HEADLINE, AUTHOR, PARA { margin: 0.5em }
A visual user agent could format the above example as:
Example rendering [D]
Adding more rules to the style sheet will allow you to further
describe the presentation of the document.
2.3 The CSS 2.1 processing model
This section presents one possible model of how user agents that
support CSS work. This is only a conceptual model; real
implementations may vary.
In this model, a user agent processes a source by going through the
following steps:
1. Parse the source document and create a document tree.
2. Identify the target media type.
3. Retrieve all style sheets associated with the document that are
specified for the target media type.
4. Annotate every element of the document tree by assigning a single
value to every property that is applicable to the target media
type. Properties are assigned values according to the mechanisms
described in the section on cascading and inheritance.
Part of the calculation of values depends on the formatting
algorithm appropriate for the target media type. For example, if
the target medium is the screen, user agents apply the visual
formatting model.
5. From the annotated document tree, generate a formatting structure.
Often, the formatting structure closely resembles the document
tree, but it may also differ significantly, notably when authors
make use of pseudo-elements and generated content. First, the
formatting structure need not be "tree-shaped" at all -- the
nature of the structure depends on the implementation. Second, the
formatting structure may contain more or less information than the
document tree. For instance, if an element in the document tree
has a value of 'none' for the 'display' property, that element
will generate nothing in the formatting structure. A list element,
on the other hand, may generate more information in the formatting
structure: the list element's content and list style information
(e.g., a bullet image).
Note that the CSS user agent does not alter the document tree
during this phase. In particular, content generated due to style
sheets is not fed back to the document language processor (e.g.,
for reparsing).
6. Transfer the formatting structure to the target medium (e.g.,
print the results, display them on the screen, render them as
speech, etc.).
Step 1 lies outside the scope of this specification (see, for example,
[DOM]).
Steps 2-5 are addressed by the bulk of this specification.
Step 6 lies outside the scope of this specification.
2.3.1 The canvas
For all media, the term canvas describes "the space where the
formatting structure is rendered." The canvas is infinite for each
dimension of the space, but rendering generally occurs within a finite
region of the canvas, established by the user agent according to the
target medium. For instance, user agents rendering to a screen
generally impose a minimum width and choose an initial width based on
the dimensions of the viewport. User agents rendering to a page
generally impose width and height constraints. Aural user agents may
impose limits in audio space, but not in time.
2.3.2 CSS 2.1 addressing model
CSS 2.1 selectors and properties allow style sheets to refer to the
following parts of a document or user agent:
* Elements in the document tree and certain relationships between
them (see the section on selectors).
* Attributes of elements in the document tree, and values of those
attributes (see the section on attribute selectors).
* Some parts of element content (see the :first-line and
:first-letter pseudo-elements).
* Elements of the document tree when they are in a certain state
(see the section on pseudo-classes).
* Some aspects of the canvas where the document will be rendered.
* Some system information (see the section on user interface).
2.4 CSS design principles
This section is non-normative.
CSS 2.1, as CSS2 and CSS1 before it, is based on a set of design
principles:
* Forward and backward compatibility. CSS 2.1 user agents will be
able to understand CSS1 style sheets. CSS1 user agents will be
able to read CSS 2.1 style sheets and discard parts they don't
understand. Also, user agents with no CSS support will be able to
display style-enhanced documents. Of course, the stylistic
enhancements made possible by CSS will not be rendered, but all
content will be presented.
* Complementary to structured documents. Style sheets complement
structured documents (e.g., HTML and XML applications), providing
stylistic information for the marked-up text. It should be easy to
change the style sheet with little or no impact on the markup.
* Vendor, platform, and device independence. Style sheets enable
documents to remain vendor, platform, and device independent.
Style sheets themselves are also vendor and platform independent,
but CSS 2.1 allows you to target a style sheet for a group of
devices (e.g., printers).
* Maintainability. By pointing to style sheets from documents,
webmasters can simplify site maintenance and retain consistent
look and feel throughout the site. For example, if the
organization's background color changes, only one file needs to be
changed.
* Simplicity. CSS is a simple style language which is human readable
and writable. The CSS properties are kept independent of each
other to the largest extent possible and there is generally only
one way to achieve a certain effect.
* Network performance. CSS provides for compact encodings of how to
present content. Compared to images or audio files, which are
often used by authors to achieve certain rendering effects, style
sheets most often decrease the content size. Also, fewer network
connections have to be opened which further increases network
performance.
* Flexibility. CSS can be applied to content in several ways. The
key feature is the ability to cascade style information specified
in the default (user agent) style sheet, user style sheets, linked
style sheets, the document head, and in attributes for the
elements forming the document body.
* Richness. Providing authors with a rich set of rendering effects
increases the richness of the Web as a medium of expression.
Designers have been longing for functionality commonly found in
desktop publishing and slide-show applications. Some of the
requested rendering effects conflict with device independence, but
CSS 2.1 goes a long way toward granting designers their requests.
* Alternative language bindings. The set of CSS properties described
in this specification form a consistent formatting model for
visual and aural presentations. This formatting model can be
accessed through the CSS language, but bindings to other languages
are also possible. For example, a JavaScript program may
dynamically change the value of a certain element's 'color'
property.
* Accessibility. Several CSS features will make the Web more
accessible to users with disabilities:
+ Properties to control font appearance allow authors to
eliminate inaccessible bit-mapped text images.
+ Positioning properties allow authors to eliminate mark-up
tricks (e.g., invisible images) to force layout.
+ The semantics of !important rules mean that users with
particular presentation requirements can override the
author's style sheets.
+ The 'inherit' value for all properties improves cascading
generality and allows for easier and more consistent style
tuning.
+ Improved media support, including media groups and the
braille, embossed, and tty media types, will allow users and
authors to tailor pages to those devices.
Note. For more information about designing accessible documents
using CSS and HTML, see [WAI-PAGEAUTH].
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
3 Conformance: Requirements and Recommendations
Contents
* 3.1 Definitions
* 3.2 Conformance
* 3.3 Error conditions
* 3.4 The text/css content type
3.1 Definitions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 (see
[RFC2119]). However, for readability, these words do not appear in all
uppercase letters in this specification.
At times, this specification recommends good practice for authors and
user agents. These recommendations are not normative and conformance
with this specification does not depend on their realization. These
recommendations contain the expression "We recommend ...", "This
specification recommends ...", or some similar wording.
The fact that a feature is marked as deprecated (namely the 'aural'
keyword) or going to be deprecated in CSS3 (namely the system colors)
also has no influence on conformance. (For example, 'aural' is marked
as non-normative, so UAs do not need to support it; the system colors
are normative, so UAs must support them.)
All sections of this specification, including appendices, are
normative unless otherwise noted.
Examples and notes are not normative.
Example(s):
Examples usually have the word "example" near their start ("Example:",
"The following example...," "For example," etc.) and are shown in the
color maroon, like this paragraph.
Notes start with the word "Note," are indented and shown in green,
like this paragraph.
Figures are for illustration only, they are not reference renderings,
unless explicitly stated.
Style sheet
A set of statements that specify presentation of a document.
Style sheets may have three different origins: author, user,
and user agent. The interaction of these sources is described
in the section on cascading and inheritance.
Valid style sheet
The validity of a style sheet depends on the level of CSS used
for the style sheet. All valid CSS1 style sheets are valid
CSS 2.1 style sheets, but some changes from CSS1 mean that a
few CSS1 style sheets will have slightly different semantics in
CSS 2.1. Some features in CSS2 are not part of CSS 2.1, so not
all CSS2 style sheets are valid CSS 2.1 style sheets.
A valid CSS 2.1 style sheet must be written according to the
grammar of CSS 2.1. Furthermore, it must contain only at-rules,
property names, and property values defined in this
specification. An illegal (invalid) at-rule, property name, or
property value is one that is not valid.
Source document
The document to which one or more style sheets apply. This is
encoded in some language that represents the document as a tree
of elements. Each element consists of a name that identifies
the type of element, optionally a number of attributes, and a
(possibly empty) content. For example, the source document
could be an XML or SGML instance.
Document language
The encoding language of the source document (e.g., HTML, XHTML
or SVG). CSS is used to describe the presentation of document
languages and CSS does not change the underlying semantics of
the document languages.
Element
(An SGML term, see [ISO8879].) The primary syntactic constructs
of the document language. Most CSS style sheet rules use the
names of these elements (such as P, TABLE, and OL in HTML) to
specify how the elements should be rendered.
Replaced element
An element that is outside the scope of the CSS formatter, such
as an image, embedded document, or applet. For example, the
content of the HTML IMG element is often replaced by the image
that its "src" attribute designates. Replaced elements often
have intrinsic dimensions: an intrinsic width, an intrinsic
height, and an intrinsic ratio. For example, a bitmap image has
an intrinsic width and an intrinsic height specified in
absolute units (from which the intrinsic ratio can obviously be
determined). On the other hand, other documents may not have
any intrinsic dimensions (for example a blank HTML document).
User agents may consider a replaced element to not have any
intrinsic dimensions if it is believed that those dimensions
could leak sensitive information to a third party. For example,
if an HTML document changed intrinsic size depending on the
user's bank balance, then the UA might want to act as if that
resource had no intrinsic dimensions.
Intrinsic dimensions
The width and height as defined by the element itself, not
imposed by the surroundings. CSS does not define how the
intrinsic dimensions are found. In CSS 2.1 it is assumed that
all replaced elements, and only replaced elements, come with
intrinsic dimensions.
Attribute
A value associated with an element, consisting of a name, and
an associated (textual) value.
Content
The content associated with an element in the source document.
Some elements have no content, in which case they are called
empty. The content of an element may include text, and it may
include a number of sub-elements, in which case the element is
called the parent of those sub-elements.
Ignore
This term has two slightly different meanings in this
specification. First, a CSS parser must follow certain rules
when it discovers unknown or illegal syntax in a style sheet.
The parser must then ignore certain parts of the style sheets.
The exact rules for what parts must be ignored is given in
these section: Declarations and properties, Rules for handling
parsing errors, Unsupported Values, or may be explained in the
text where the term "ignore" appears. Second, a user agent may
(and, in some cases must) disregard certain properties or
values in the style sheet even if the syntax is legal. For
example, table-column elements can't affect the font of the
column, so the font properties must be ignored.
Rendered content
The content of an element after the rendering that applies to
it according to the relevant style sheets has been applied. The
rendered content of a replaced element comes from outside the
source document. Rendered content may also be alternate text
for an element (e.g., the value of the XHTML "alt" attribute),
and may include items inserted implicitly or explicitly by the
style sheet, such as bullets, numbering, etc.
Document tree
The tree of elements encoded in the source document. Each
element in this tree has exactly one parent, with the exception
of the root element, which has none.
Child
An element A is called the child of element B if and only if B
is the parent of A.
Descendant
An element A is called a descendant of an element B, if either
(1) A is a child of B, or (2) A is the child of some element C
that is a descendant of B.
Ancestor
An element A is called an ancestor of an element B, if and only
if B is a descendant of A.
Sibling
An element A is called a sibling of an element B, if and only
if B and A share the same parent element. Element A is a
preceding sibling if it comes before B in the document tree.
Element B is a following sibling if it comes after A in the
document tree.
Preceding element
An element A is called a preceding element of an element B, if
and only if (1) A is an ancestor of B or (2) A is a preceding
sibling of B.
Following element
An element A is called a following element of an element B, if
and only if B is a preceding element of A.
Author
An author is a person who writes documents and associated style
sheets. An authoring tool generates documents and associated
style sheets.
User
A user is a person who interacts with a user agent to view,
hear, or otherwise use a document and its associated style
sheet. The user may provide a personal style sheet that encodes
personal preferences.
User agent (UA)
A user agent is any program that interprets a document written
in the document language and applies associated style sheets
according to the terms of this specification. A user agent may
display a document, read it aloud, cause it to be printed,
convert it to another format, etc.
An HTML user agent is one that supports the HTML 2.x, HTML 3.x,
or HTML 4.x specifications. A user agent that supports XHTML
[XHTML], but not HTML (as listed in the previous sentence) is
not considered an HTML user agent for the purpose of
conformance with this specification.
Here is an example of a source document written in HTML:
My home page
My home page
Welcome to my home page! Let me tell you about my favorite
composers:
Elvis Costello
Johannes Brahms
Georges Brassens
This results in the following tree:
Sample document tree [D]
According to the definition of HTML 4, HEAD elements will be inferred
during parsing and become part of the document tree even if the "head"
tags are not in the document source. Similarly, the parser knows where
the P and LI elements end, even though there are no
and
tags in the source.
Documents written in XHTML (and other XML-based languages) behave
differently: there are no inferred elements and all elements must have
end tags.
3.2 Conformance
This section defines conformance with the CSS 2.1 specification only.
There may be other levels of CSS in the future that may require a user
agent to implement a different set of features in order to conform.
In general, the following points must be observed by a user agent
claiming conformance to this specification:
1. It must support one or more of the CSS 2.1 media types.
2. For each source document, it must attempt to retrieve all
associated style sheets that are appropriate for the supported
media types. If it cannot retrieve all associated style sheets
(for instance, because of network errors), it must display the
document using those it can retrieve.
3. It must parse the style sheets according to this specification. In
particular, it must recognize all at-rules, blocks, declarations,
and selectors (see the grammar of CSS 2.1). If a user agent
encounters a property that applies for a supported media type, the
user agent must parse the value according to the property
definition. This means that the user agent must accept all valid
values and must ignore declarations with invalid values. User
agents must ignore rules that apply to unsupported media types.
4. For each element in a document tree, it must assign a value for
every applicable property according to the property's definition
and the rules of cascading and inheritance.
5. If the source document comes with alternate style sheet sets (such
as with the "alternate" keyword in HTML 4 [HTML4]), the UA must
allow the user to select which style sheet set the UA should
apply.
6. The UA must allow the user to turn off the influence of author
style sheets.
Not every user agent must observe every point, however:
* An application that reads style sheets without rendering any
content (e.g., a CSS 2.1 validator) must respect points 1-3.
* An authoring tool is only required to output valid style sheets
* A user agent that renders a document with associated style sheets
must respect points 1-5 and render the document according to the
media-specific requirements set forth in this specification.
Values may be approximated when required by the user agent.
The inability of a user agent to implement part of this specification
due to the limitations of a particular device (e.g., a user agent
cannot render colors on a monochrome monitor or page) does not imply
non-conformance.
UAs must allow users to specify a file that contains the user style
sheet. UAs that run on devices without any means of writing or
specifying files are exempted from this requirement. Additionally, UAs
may offer other means to specify user preferences, for example through
a GUI.
CSS 2.1 does not define which properties apply to form controls and
frames, or how CSS can be used to style them. User agents may apply
CSS properties to these elements. Authors are recommended to treat
such support as experimental. A future level of CSS may specify this
further.
3.3 Error conditions
In general, this document specifies error handling behavior throughout
the specification. For example, see the rules for handling parsing
errors.
3.4 The text/css content type
CSS style sheets that exist in separate files are sent over the
Internet as a sequence of bytes accompanied by encoding information.
The structure of the transmission, termed a message entity, is defined
by RFC 2045 and RFC 2616 (see [RFC2045] and [RFC2616]). A message
entity with a content type of "text/css" represents an independent CSS
document. The "text/css" content type has been registered by RFC 2318
([RFC2318]).
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
4 Syntax and basic data types
Contents
* 4.1 Syntax
+ 4.1.1 Tokenization
+ 4.1.2 Keywords
o 4.1.2.1 Vendor-specific extensions
o 4.1.2.2 Informative Historical Notes
+ 4.1.3 Characters and case
+ 4.1.4 Statements
+ 4.1.5 At-rules
+ 4.1.6 Blocks
+ 4.1.7 Rule sets, declaration blocks, and selectors
+ 4.1.8 Declarations and properties
+ 4.1.9 Comments
* 4.2 Rules for handling parsing errors
* 4.3 Values
+ 4.3.1 Integers and real numbers
+ 4.3.2 Lengths
+ 4.3.3 Percentages
+ 4.3.4 URL + URN = URI
+ 4.3.5 Counters
+ 4.3.6 Colors
+ 4.3.7 Strings
+ 4.3.8 Unsupported Values
* 4.4 CSS style sheet representation
+ 4.4.1 Referring to characters not represented in a character
encoding
4.1 Syntax
This section describes a grammar (and forward-compatible parsing
rules) common to any level of CSS (including CSS 2.1). Future updates
of CSS will adhere to this core syntax, although they may add
additional syntactic constraints.
These descriptions are normative. They are also complemented by the
normative grammar rules presented in Appendix G.
4.1.1 Tokenization
All levels of CSS -- level 1, level 2, and any future levels -- use
the same core syntax. This allows UAs to parse (though not completely
understand) style sheets written in levels of CSS that didn't exist at
the time the UAs were created. Designers can use this feature to
create style sheets that work with older user agents, while also
exercising the possibilities of the latest levels of CSS.
At the lexical level, CSS style sheets consist of a sequence of
tokens. The list of tokens for CSS 2.1 is as follows. The definitions
use Lex-style regular expressions. Octal codes refer to ISO 10646
([ISO10646]). As in Lex, in case of multiple matches, the longest
match determines the token.
Token Definition
_________________________________________________________________
IDENT {ident}
ATKEYWORD @{ident}
STRING {string}
INVALID {invalid}
HASH #{name}
NUMBER {num}
PERCENTAGE {num}%
DIMENSION {num}{ident}
URI url\({w}{string}{w}\)
|url\({w}([!#$%&*-~]|{nonascii}|{escape})*{w}\)
UNICODE-RANGE U\+[0-9A-F?]{1,6}(-[0-9A-F]{1,6})?
CDO
; ;
{ \{
} \}
( \(
) \)
[ \[
] \]
S [ \t\r\n\f]+
COMMENT \/\*[^*]*\*+([^/*][^*]*\*+)*\/
FUNCTION {ident}\(
INCLUDES ~=
DASHMATCH |=
DELIM any other character not matched by the above rules, and neither
a single nor a double quote
The macros in curly braces ({}) above are defined as follows:
Macro Definition
_________________________________________________________________
ident [-]?{nmstart}{nmchar}*
name {nmchar}+
nmstart [_a-zA-Z]|{nonascii}|{escape}
nonascii [^\0-\177]
unicode \\[0-9a-f]{1,6}(\r\n|[ \n\r\t\f])?
escape {unicode}|\\[^\n\r\f0-9a-f]
nmchar [_a-zA-Z0-9-]|{nonascii}|{escape}
num [0-9]+|[0-9]*\.[0-9]+
string {string1}|{string2}
string1 \"([^\n\r\f\\"]|\\{nl}|{escape})*\"
string2 \'([^\n\r\f\\']|\\{nl}|{escape})*\'
invalid {invalid1}|{invalid2}
invalid1 \"([^\n\r\f\\"]|\\{nl}|{escape})*
invalid2 \'([^\n\r\f\\']|\\{nl}|{escape})*
nl \n|\r\n|\r|\f
w [ \t\r\n\f]*
Below is the core syntax for CSS. The sections that follow describe
how to use it. Appendix G describes a more restrictive grammar that is
closer to the CSS level 2 language.
stylesheet : [ CDO | CDC | S | statement ]*;
statement : ruleset | at-rule;
at-rule : ATKEYWORD S* any* [ block | ';' S* ];
block : '{' S* [ any | block | ATKEYWORD S* | ';' S* ]* '}' S*;
ruleset : selector? '{' S* declaration? [ ';' S* declaration? ]* '}' S*;
selector : any+;
declaration : DELIM? property S* ':' S* value;
property : IDENT;
value : [ any | block | ATKEYWORD S* ]+;
any : [ IDENT | NUMBER | PERCENTAGE | DIMENSION | STRING
| DELIM | URI | HASH | UNICODE-RANGE | INCLUDES
| DASHMATCH | FUNCTION S* any* ')'
| '(' S* any* ')' | '[' S* any* ']' ] S*;
COMMENT tokens do not occur in the grammar (to keep it readable), but
any number of these tokens may appear anywhere between other tokens.
The token S in the grammar above stands for whitespace. Only the
characters "space" (U+0020), "tab" (U+0009), "line feed" (U+000A),
"carriage return" (U+000D), and "form feed" (U+000C) can occur in
whitespace. Other space-like characters, such as "em-space" (U+2003)
and "ideographic space" (U+3000), are never part of whitespace.
The meaning of input that cannot be tokenized or parsed is undefined
in CSS 2.1.
4.1.2 Keywords
Keywords have the form of identifiers. Keywords must not be placed
between quotes ("..." or '...'). Thus,
red
is a keyword, but
"red"
is not. (It is a string.) Other illegal examples:
Illegal example(s):
width: "auto";
border: "none";
background: "red";
4.1.2.1 Vendor-specific extensions
In CSS 2.1, identifiers may begin with '-' (dash) or '_' (underscore).
Keywords and property names, beginning with -' or '_' are reserved for
vendor-specific extensions. Such vendor-specific extensions should
have one of the following formats:
'-' + vendor identifier + '-' + meaningful name
'_' + vendor identifier + '-' + meaningful name
Example(s):
For example, if XYZ organization added a property to describe the
color of the border on the East side of the display, they might call
it -xyz-border-east-color.
Other known examples:
-moz-box-sizing
-moz-border-radius
-wap-accesskey
An initial dash or underscore is guaranteed never to be used in a
property or keyword by any current or future level of CSS. Thus
typical CSS implementations may not recognize such properties and may
ignore them according to the rules for handling parsing errors.
However, because the initial dash or underscore is part of the
grammar, CSS 2.1 implementers should always be able to use a
CSS-conforming parser, whether or not they support any vendor-specific
extensions.
4.1.2.2 Informative Historical Notes
This section is informative.
At the time of writing, the following prefixes are known to exist:
prefix organization
-ms- Microsoft Corporation
-moz- The Mozilla Organization
-o- Opera Software
-atsc- Advanced Television Standards Committee
-wap- The WAP Forum
Vendor/organization specific extensions should be avoided.
4.1.3 Characters and case
The following rules always hold:
* All CSS style sheets are case-insensitive, except for parts that
are not under the control of CSS. For example, the
case-sensitivity of values of the HTML attributes "id" and
"class", of font names, and of URIs lies outside the scope of this
specification. Note in particular that element names are
case-insensitive in HTML, but case-sensitive in XML.
* In CSS 2.1, identifiers (including element names, classes, and IDs
in selectors) can contain only the characters [A-Za-z0-9] and ISO
10646 characters U+00A1 and higher, plus the hyphen (-) and the
underscore (_); they cannot start with a digit, or a hyphen
followed by a digit. Only properties, values, units,
pseudo-classes, pseudo-elements, and at-rules may start with a
hyphen (-); other identifiers (e.g. element names, classes, or
IDs) may not. Identifiers can also contain escaped characters and
any ISO 10646 character as a numeric code (see next item). For
instance, the identifier "B&W?" may be written as "B\&W\?" or
"B\26 W\3F".
Note that Unicode is code-by-code equivalent to ISO 10646 (see
[UNICODE] and [ISO10646]).
* In CSS 2.1, a backslash (\) character indicates three types of
character escapes.
First, inside a string, a backslash followed by a newline is
ignored (i.e., the string is deemed not to contain either the
backslash or the newline).
Second, it cancels the meaning of special CSS characters. Any
character (except a hexadecimal digit) can be escaped with a
backslash to remove its special meaning. For example, "\"" is a
string consisting of one double quote. Style sheet preprocessors
must not remove these backslashes from a style sheet since that
would change the style sheet's meaning.
Third, backslash escapes allow authors to refer to characters they
can't easily put in a document. In this case, the backslash is
followed by at most six hexadecimal digits (0..9A..F), which stand
for the ISO 10646 ([ISO10646]) character with that number, which
must not be zero. (It is undefined in CSS 2.1 what happens if a
style sheet does contain a character with Unicode codepoint zero.)
If a character in the range [0-9a-fA-F] follows the hexadecimal
number, the end of the number needs to be made clear. There are
two ways to do that:
1. with a space (or other whitespace character): "\26 B" ("&B").
In this case, user agents should treat a "CR/LF" pair
(U+000D/U+000A) as a single whitespace character.
2. by providing exactly 6 hexadecimal digits: "\000026B" ("&B")
In fact, these two methods may be combined. Only one whitespace
character is ignored after a hexadecimal escape. Note that this
means that a "real" space after the escape sequence must itself
either be escaped or doubled.
* Note: Backslash escapes, where allowed, are always considered to
be part of an identifier or a string (i.e., "\7B" is not
punctuation, even though "{" is, and "\32" is allowed at the start
of a class name, even though "2" is not).
The identifier "te\st" is exactly the same identifier as "test".
4.1.4 Statements
A CSS style sheet, for any level of CSS, consists of a list of
statements (see the grammar above). There are two kinds of statements:
at-rules and rule sets. There may be whitespace around the statements.
In this specification, the expressions "immediately before" or
"immediately after" mean with no intervening whitespace or comments.
4.1.5 At-rules
At-rules start with an at-keyword, an '@' character followed
immediately by an identifier (for example, '@import', '@page').
An at-rule consists of everything up to and including the next
semicolon (;) or the next block, whichever comes first.
CSS 2.1 user agents must ignore any '@import' rule that occurs inside
a block or after any valid rule other than an @charset or an @import
rule.
Illegal example(s):
Assume, for example, that a CSS 2.1 parser encounters this style
sheet:
@import "subs.css";
h1 { color: blue }
@import "list.css";
The second '@import' is illegal according to CSS 2.1. The CSS 2.1
parser ignores the whole at-rule, effectively reducing the style sheet
to:
@import "subs.css";
h1 { color: blue }
Illegal example(s):
In the following example, the second '@import' rule is invalid, since
it occurs inside a '@media' block.
@import "subs.css";
@media print {
@import "print-main.css";
body { font-size: 10pt }
}
h1 {color: blue }
Instead, to achieve the effect of only importing a style sheet for
'print' media, use the @import with media syntax, e.g.:
@import "subs.css";
@import "print-main.css" print;
@media print {
body { font-size: 10pt }
}
h1 {color: blue }
4.1.6 Blocks
A block starts with a left curly brace ({) and ends with the matching
right curly brace (}). In between there may be any characters, except
that parentheses (( )), brackets ([ ]) and braces ({ }) must always
occur in matching pairs and may be nested. Single (') and double
quotes (") must also occur in matching pairs, and characters between
them are parsed as a string. See Tokenization above for the definition
of a string.
Illegal example(s):
Here is an example of a block. Note that the right brace between the
double quotes does not match the opening brace of the block, and that
the second single quote is an escaped character, and thus doesn't
match the first single quote:
{ causta: "}" + ({7} * '\'') }
Note that the above rule is not valid CSS 2.1, but it is still a block
as defined above.
4.1.7 Rule sets, declaration blocks, and selectors
A rule set (also called "rule") consists of a selector followed by a
declaration block.
A declaration block (also called a {}-block in the following text)
starts with a left curly brace ({) and ends with the matching right
curly brace (}). In between there must be a list of zero or more
semicolon-separated (;) declarations.
The selector (see also the section on selectors) consists of
everything up to (but not including) the first left curly brace ({). A
selector always goes together with a {}-block. When a user agent can't
parse the selector (i.e., it is not valid CSS 2.1), it must ignore the
{}-block as well.
CSS 2.1 gives a special meaning to the comma (,) in selectors.
However, since it is not known if the comma may acquire other meanings
in future updates of CSS, the whole statement should be ignored if
there is an error anywhere in the selector, even though the rest of
the selector may look reasonable in CSS 2.1.
Illegal example(s):
For example, since the "&" is not a valid token in a CSS 2.1 selector,
a CSS 2.1 user agent must ignore the whole second line, and not set
the color of H3 to red:
h1, h2 {color: green }
h3, h4 & h5 {color: red }
h6 {color: black }
Example(s):
Here is a more complex example. The first two pairs of curly braces
are inside a string, and do not mark the end of the selector. This is
a valid CSS 2.1 rule.
p[example="public class foo\
{\
private int x;\
\
foo(int x) {\
this.x = x;\
}\
\
}"] { color: red }
4.1.8 Declarations and properties
A declaration is either empty or consists of a property, followed by a
colon (:), followed by a value. Around each of these there may be
whitespace.
Because of the way selectors work, multiple declarations for the same
selector may be organized into semicolon (;) separated groups.
Example(s):
Thus, the following rules:
h1 { font-weight: bold }
h1 { font-size: 12px }
h1 { line-height: 14px }
h1 { font-family: Helvetica }
h1 { font-variant: normal }
h1 { font-style: normal }
are equivalent to:
h1 {
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 12px;
line-height: 14px;
font-family: Helvetica;
font-variant: normal;
font-style: normal
}
A property is an identifier. Any character may occur in the value.
Parentheses ("( )"), brackets ("[ ]"), braces ("{ }"), single quotes
(') and double quotes (") must come in matching pairs, and semicolons
not in strings must be escaped. Parentheses, brackets, and braces may
be nested. Inside the quotes, characters are parsed as a string.
The syntax of values is specified separately for each property, but in
any case, values are built from identifiers, strings, numbers,
lengths, percentages, URIs, and colors.
A user agent must ignore a declaration with an invalid property name
or an invalid value. Every CSS 2.1 property has its own syntactic and
semantic restrictions on the values it accepts.
Illegal example(s):
For example, assume a CSS 2.1 parser encounters this style sheet:
h1 { color: red; font-style: 12pt } /* Invalid value: 12pt */
p { color: blue; font-vendor: any; /* Invalid prop.: font-vendor */
font-variant: small-caps }
em em { font-style: normal }
The second declaration on the first line has an invalid value '12pt'.
The second declaration on the second line contains an undefined
property 'font-vendor'. The CSS 2.1 parser will ignore these
declarations, effectively reducing the style sheet to:
h1 { color: red; }
p { color: blue; font-variant: small-caps }
em em { font-style: normal }
4.1.9 Comments
Comments begin with the characters "/*" and end with the characters
"*/". They may occur anywhere between tokens, and their contents have
no influence on the rendering. Comments may not be nested.
CSS also allows the SGML comment delimiters ("") in
certain places defined by the grammar, but they do not delimit CSS
comments. They are permitted so that style rules appearing in an HTML
source document (in the STYLE element) may be hidden from pre-HTML 3.2
user agents. See the HTML 4 specification ([HTML4]) for more
information.
4.2 Rules for handling parsing errors
In some cases, user agents must ignore part of an illegal style sheet.
This specification defines ignore to mean that the user agent parses
the illegal part (in order to find its beginning and end), but
otherwise acts as if it had not been there. CSS 2.1 reserves for
future updates of CSS all property:value combinations and @-keywords
that do not contain an identifier beginning with dash or underscore.
Implementations must ignore such combinations (other than those
introduced by future updates of CSS).
To ensure that new properties and new values for existing properties
can be added in the future, user agents are required to obey the
following rules when they encounter the following scenarios:
* Unknown properties. User agents must ignore a declaration with an
unknown property. For example, if the style sheet is:
h1 { color: red; rotation: 70minutes }
the user agent will treat this as if the style sheet had been
h1 { color: red }
* Illegal values. User agents must ignore a declaration with an
illegal value. For example:
img { float: left } /* correct CSS 2.1 */
img { float: left here } /* "here" is not a value of 'float' */
img { background: "red" } /* keywords cannot be quoted */
img { border-width: 3 } /* a unit must be specified for length values */
A CSS 2.1 parser would honor the first rule and ignore the rest,
as if the style sheet had been:
img { float: left }
img { }
img { }
img { }
A user agent conforming to a future CSS specification may accept
one or more of the other rules as well.
* Malformed declarations. User agents must handle unexpected tokens
encountered while parsing a declaration by reading until the end
of the declaration, while observing the rules for matching pairs
of (), [], {}, "", and '', and correctly handling escapes. For
example, a malformed declaration may be missing a property, colon
(:) or value. The following are all equivalent:
p { color:green }
p { color:green; color } /* malformed declaration missing ':', value */
p { color:red; color; color:green } /* same with expected recovery */
p { color:green; color: } /* malformed declaration missing value */
p { color:red; color:; color:green } /* same with expected recovery */
p { color:green; color{;color:maroon} } /* unexpected tokens { } */
p { color:red; color{;color:maroon}; color:green } /* same with recovery */
* Invalid at-keywords. User agents must ignore an invalid at-keyword
together with everything following it, up to and including the
next semicolon (;) or block ({...}), whichever comes first. For
example, consider the following:
@three-dee {
@background-lighting {
azimuth: 30deg;
elevation: 190deg;
}
h1 { color: red }
}
h1 { color: blue }
The '@three-dee' at-rule is not part of CSS 2.1. Therefore, the
whole at-rule (up to, and including, the third right curly brace)
is ignored. A CSS 2.1 user agent ignores it, effectively reducing
the style sheet to:
h1 { color: blue }
Something inside an at-rule that is ignored because it is invalid,
such as an invalid declaration within an @media-rule, does not
make the entire at-rule invalid.
* Unexpected end of style sheet.
User agents must close all open constructs (for example: blocks,
parentheses, brackets, rules, strings, and comments) at the end of
the style sheet. For example:
@media screen {
p:before { content: 'Hello
would be treated the same as:
@media screen {
p:before { content: 'Hello'; }
}
in a conformant UA.
* Unexpected end of string.
User agents must close strings upon reaching the end of a line,
but then drop the construct (declaration or rule) in which the
string was found. For example:
p {
color: green;
font-family: 'Courier New Times
color: red;
color: green;
}
...would be treated the same as:
p { color: green; color: green; }
...because the second declaration (from 'font-family' to the
semicolon after 'color: red') is invalid and is dropped.
4.3 Values
4.3.1 Integers and real numbers
Some value types may have integer values (denoted by ) or
real number values (denoted by ). Real numbers and integers
are specified in decimal notation only. An consists of one
or more digits "0" to "9". A can either be an , or
it can be zero or more digits followed by a dot (.) followed by one or
more digits. Both integers and real numbers may be preceded by a "-"
or "+" to indicate the sign.
Note that many properties that allow an integer or real number as a
value actually restrict the value to some range, often to a
non-negative value.
4.3.2 Lengths
Lengths refer to horizontal or vertical measurements.
The format of a length value (denoted by in this
specification) is a (with or without a decimal point)
immediately followed by a unit identifier (e.g., px, em, etc.). After
a zero length, the unit identifier is optional.
Some properties allow negative length values, but this may complicate
the formatting model and there may be implementation-specific limits.
If a negative length value cannot be supported, it should be converted
to the nearest value that can be supported.
If a negative length value is set on a property that does not allow
negative length values, the declaration is ignored.
There are two types of length units: relative and absolute. Relative
length units specify a length relative to another length property.
Style sheets that use relative units will more easily scale from one
medium to another (e.g., from a computer display to a laser printer).
Relative units are:
* em: the 'font-size' of the relevant font
* ex: the 'x-height' of the relevant font
* px: pixels, relative to the viewing device
Example(s):
h1 { margin: 0.5em } /* em */
h1 { margin: 1ex } /* ex */
p { font-size: 12px } /* px */
The 'em' unit is equal to the computed value of the 'font-size'
property of the element on which it is used. The exception is when
'em' occurs in the value of the 'font-size' property itself, in which
case it refers to the font size of the parent element. It may be used
for vertical or horizontal measurement. (This unit is also sometimes
called the quad-width in typographic texts.)
The 'ex' unit is defined by the font's 'x-height'. The x-height is so
called because it is often equal to the height of the lowercase "x".
However, an 'ex' is defined even for fonts that don't contain an "x".
Example(s):
The rule:
h1 { line-height: 1.2em }
means that the line height of "h1" elements will be 20% greater than
the font size of the "h1" elements. On the other hand:
h1 { font-size: 1.2em }
means that the font-size of "h1" elements will be 20% greater than the
font size inherited by "h1" elements.
When specified for the root of the document tree (e.g., "HTML" in
HTML), 'em' and 'ex' refer to the property's initial value.
Pixel units are relative to the resolution of the viewing device,
i.e., most often a computer display. If the pixel density of the
output device is very different from that of a typical computer
display, the user agent should rescale pixel values. It is recommended
that the reference pixel be the visual angle of one pixel on a device
with a pixel density of 96dpi and a distance from the reader of an
arm's length. For a nominal arm's length of 28 inches, the visual
angle is therefore about 0.0213 degrees.
For reading at arm's length, 1px thus corresponds to about 0.26 mm
(1/96 inch). When printed on a laser printer, meant for reading at a
little less than arm's length (55 cm, 21 inches), 1px is about
0.20 mm. On a 300 dots-per-inch (dpi) printer, that may be rounded up
to 3 dots (0.25 mm); on a 600 dpi printer, it can be rounded to 5
dots.
The two images below illustrate the effect of viewing distance on the
size of a pixel and the effect of a device's resolution. In the first
image, a reading distance of 71 cm (28 inch) results in a px of
0.26 mm, while a reading distance of 3.5 m (12 feet) requires a px of
1.3 mm.
Showing that pixels must become larger if the viewing distance
increases [D]
In the second image, an area of 1px by 1px is covered by a single dot
in a low-resolution device (a computer screen), while the same area is
covered by 16 dots in a higher resolution device (such as a 400 dpi
laser printer).
Showing that more device pixels (dots) are needed to cover a 1px by
1px area on a high-resolution device than on a low-res one [D]
Child elements do not inherit the relative values specified for their
parent; they inherit the computed values.
Example(s):
In the following rules, the computed 'text-indent' value of "h1"
elements will be 36px, not 45px, if "h1" is a child of the "body"
element.
body {
font-size: 12px;
text-indent: 3em; /* i.e., 36px */
}
h1 { font-size: 15px }
Absolute length units are only useful when the physical properties of
the output medium are known. The absolute units are:
* in: inches -- 1 inch is equal to 2.54 centimeters.
* cm: centimeters
* mm: millimeters
* pt: points -- the points used by CSS 2.1 are equal to 1/72nd of an
inch.
* pc: picas -- 1 pica is equal to 12 points.
Example(s):
h1 { margin: 0.5in } /* inches */
h2 { line-height: 3cm } /* centimeters */
h3 { word-spacing: 4mm } /* millimeters */
h4 { font-size: 12pt } /* points */
h4 { font-size: 1pc } /* picas */
In cases where the used length cannot be supported, user agents must
approximate it in the actual value.
4.3.3 Percentages
The format of a percentage value (denoted by in this
specification) is a immediately followed by '%'.
Percentage values are always relative to another value, for example a
length. Each property that allows percentages also defines the value
to which the percentage refers. The value may be that of another
property for the same element, a property for an ancestor element, or
a value of the formatting context (e.g., the width of a containing
block). When a percentage value is set for a property of the root
element and the percentage is defined as referring to the inherited
value of some property, the resultant value is the percentage times
the initial value of that property.
Example(s):
Since child elements (generally) inherit the computed values of their
parent, in the following example, the children of the P element will
inherit a value of 12px for 'line-height', not the percentage value
(120%):
p { font-size: 10px }
p { line-height: 120% } /* 120% of 'font-size' */
4.3.4 URL + URN = URI
URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) provide the address of a resource on
the Web. Another way of identifying resources is called URN (Uniform
Resource Name). Together they are called URIs (Uniform Resource
Identifiers, see [RFC3986]). This specification uses the term URI.
URI values in this specification are denoted by . The functional
notation used to designate URIs in property values is "url()", as in:
Example(s):
body { background: url("http://www.example.com/pinkish.png") }
The format of a URI value is 'url(' followed by optional whitespace
followed by an optional single quote (') or double quote (") character
followed by the URI itself, followed by an optional single quote (')
or double quote (") character followed by optional whitespace followed
by ')'. The two quote characters must be the same.
Example(s):
An example without quotes:
li { list-style: url(http://www.example.com/redball.png) disc }
Some characters appearing in an unquoted URI, such as parentheses,
commas, whitespace characters, single quotes (') and double quotes
("), must be escaped with a backslash: '\(', '\)', '\,'.
Depending on the type of URI, it might also be possible to write the
above characters as URI-escapes (where "(" = %28, ")" = %29, etc.) as
described in [RFC3986].
In order to create modular style sheets that are not dependent on the
absolute location of a resource, authors may use relative URIs.
Relative URIs (as defined in [RFC3986]) are resolved to full URIs
using a base URI. RFC 3986, section 5, defines the normative algorithm
for this process. For CSS style sheets, the base URI is that of the
style sheet, not that of the source document.
Example(s):
For example, suppose the following rule:
body { background: url("yellow") }
is located in a style sheet designated by the URI:
http://www.example.org/style/basic.css
The background of the source document's BODY will be tiled with
whatever image is described by the resource designated by the URI
http://www.example.org/style/yellow
User agents may vary in how they handle invalid URIs or URIs that
designate unavailable or inapplicable resources.
4.3.5 Counters
Counters are denoted by identifiers (see the 'counter-increment' and
'counter-reset' properties). To refer to the value of a counter, the
notation 'counter()' or 'counter(,
)' is used. The default style is 'decimal'.
To refer to a sequence of nested counters of the same name, the
notation is 'counters(, )' or
'counters(, , )'. See "Nested
counters and scope" in the chapter on generated content.
In CSS2, the values of counters can only be referred to from the
'content' property. Note that 'none' is a possible :
'counter(x, none)' yields an empty string.
Example(s):
Here is a style sheet that numbers paragraphs (p) for each chapter
(h1). The paragraphs are numbered with roman numerals, followed by a
period and a space:
p {counter-increment: par-num}
h1 {counter-reset: par-num}
p:before {content: counter(par-num, upper-roman) ". "}
Counters that are not in the scope of any 'counter-reset', are assumed
to have been reset to 0 by a 'counter-reset' on the root element.
4.3.6 Colors
A is either a keyword or a numerical RGB specification.
The list of keyword color names is: aqua, black, blue, fuchsia, gray,
green, lime, maroon, navy, olive, orange, purple, red, silver, teal,
white, and yellow. These 17 colors have the following values:
maroon #800000 red #ff0000 orange #ffA500 yellow #ffff00 olive #808000
purple #800080 fuchsia #ff00ff white #ffffff lime #00ff00 green
#008000
navy #000080 blue #0000ff aqua #00ffff teal #008080
black #000000 silver #c0c0c0 gray #808080
In addition to these color keywords, users may specify keywords that
correspond to the colors used by certain objects in the user's
environment. Please consult the section on system colors for more
information.
Example(s):
body {color: black; background: white }
h1 { color: maroon }
h2 { color: olive }
The RGB color model is used in numerical color specifications. These
examples all specify the same color:
Example(s):
em { color: #f00 } /* #rgb */
em { color: #ff0000 } /* #rrggbb */
em { color: rgb(255,0,0) }
em { color: rgb(100%, 0%, 0%) }
The format of an RGB value in hexadecimal notation is a '#'
immediately followed by either three or six hexadecimal characters.
The three-digit RGB notation (#rgb) is converted into six-digit form
(#rrggbb) by replicating digits, not by adding zeros. For example,
#fb0 expands to #ffbb00. This ensures that white (#ffffff) can be
specified with the short notation (#fff) and removes any dependencies
on the color depth of the display.
The format of an RGB value in the functional notation is 'rgb('
followed by a comma-separated list of three numerical values (either
three integer values or three percentage values) followed by ')'. The
integer value 255 corresponds to 100%, and to F or FF in the
hexadecimal notation: rgb(255,255,255) = rgb(100%,100%,100%) = #FFF.
Whitespace characters are allowed around the numerical values.
All RGB colors are specified in the sRGB color space (see [SRGB]).
User agents may vary in the fidelity with which they represent these
colors, but using sRGB provides an unambiguous and objectively
measurable definition of what the color should be, which can be
related to international standards (see [COLORIMETRY]).
Conforming user agents may limit their color-displaying efforts to
performing a gamma-correction on them. sRGB specifies a display gamma
of 2.2 under specified viewing conditions. User agents should adjust
the colors given in CSS such that, in combination with an output
device's "natural" display gamma, an effective display gamma of 2.2 is
produced. See the section on gamma correction for further details.
Note that only colors specified in CSS are affected; e.g., images are
expected to carry their own color information.
Values outside the device gamut should be clipped: the red, green, and
blue values must be changed to fall within the range supported by the
device. For a typical CRT monitor, whose device gamut is the same as
sRGB, the four rules below are equivalent:
Example(s):
em { color: rgb(255,0,0) } /* integer range 0 - 255 */
em { color: rgb(300,0,0) } /* clipped to rgb(255,0,0) */
em { color: rgb(255,-10,0) } /* clipped to rgb(255,0,0) */
em { color: rgb(110%, 0%, 0%) } /* clipped to rgb(100%,0%,0%) */
Other devices, such as printers, have different gamuts than sRGB; some
colors outside the 0..255 sRGB range will be representable (inside the
device gamut), while other colors inside the 0..255 sRGB range will be
outside the device gamut and will thus be clipped.
4.3.7 Strings
Strings can either be written with double quotes or with single
quotes. Double quotes cannot occur inside double quotes, unless
escaped (e.g., as '\"' or as '\22'). Analogously for single quotes
(e.g., "\'" or "\27").
Example(s):
"this is a 'string'"
"this is a \"string\""
'this is a "string"'
'this is a \'string\''
A string cannot directly contain a newline. To include a newline in a
string, use an escape representing the line feed character in
ISO-10646 (U+000A), such as "\A" or "\00000a". This character
represents the generic notion of "newline" in CSS. See the 'content'
property for an example.
It is possible to break strings over several lines, for esthetic or
other reasons, but in such a case the newline itself has to be escaped
with a backslash (\). For instance, the following two selectors are
exactly the same:
Example(s):
a[title="a not s\
o very long title"] {/*...*/}
a[title="a not so very long title"] {/*...*/}
4.3.8 Unsupported Values
If a UA does not support a particular value, it should ignore that
value when parsing style sheets, as if that value was an illegal
value. For example:
Example(s):
h3 {
display: inline;
display: run-in;
}
A UA that supports the 'run-in' value for the 'display' property will
accept the first display declaration and then "write over" that value
with the second display declaration. A UA that does not support the
'run-in' value will process the first display declaration and ignore
the second display declaration.
4.4 CSS style sheet representation
A CSS style sheet is a sequence of characters from the Universal
Character Set (see [ISO10646]). For transmission and storage, these
characters must be encoded by a character encoding that supports the
set of characters available in US-ASCII (e.g., UTF-8, ISO 8859-x,
SHIFT JIS, etc.). For a good introduction to character sets and
character encodings, please consult the HTML 4 specification ([HTML4],
chapter 5), See also the XML 1.0 specification ([XML10], sections 2.2
and 4.3.3, and Appendix F).
When a style sheet is embedded in another document, such as in the
STYLE element or "style" attribute of HTML, the style sheet shares the
character encoding of the whole document.
When a style sheet resides in a separate file, user agents must
observe the following priorities when determining a style sheet's
character encoding (from highest priority to lowest):
1. An HTTP "charset" parameter in a "Content-Type" field (or similar
parameters in other protocols)
2. BOM and/or @charset (see below)
3. or other metadata from the linking mechanism (if
any)
4. charset of referring style sheet or document (if any)
5. Assume UTF-8
Authors using an @charset rule must place the rule at the very
beginning of the style sheet, preceded by no characters. (If a byte
order mark is appropriate for the encoding used, it may precede the
@charset rule.)
After "@charset", authors specify the name of a character encoding (in
quotes). For example:
@charset "ISO-8859-1";
@charset must be written literally, i.e., the 10 characters '@charset
"' (lowercase, no backslash escapes), followed by the encoding name,
followed by '";'.
The name must be a charset name as described in the IANA registry. See
[CHARSETS] for a complete list of charsets. Authors should use the
charset names marked as "preferred MIME name" in the IANA registry.
User agents must support at least the UTF-8 encoding.
User agents must ignore any @charset rule not at the beginning of the
style sheet. When user agents detect the character encoding using the
BOM and/or the @charset rule, they should follow the following rules:
* Except as specified in these rules, all @charset rules are
ignored.
* The encoding is detected based on the stream of bytes that begins
the style sheet. The following table gives a set of possibilities
for initial byte sequences (written in hexadecimal). The first row
that matches the beginning of the style sheet gives the result of
encoding detection based on the BOM and/or @charset rule. If no
rows match, the encoding cannot be detected based on the BOM
and/or @charset rule. The notation (...)* refers to repetition for
which the best match is the one that repeats as few times as
possible. The bytes marked "XX" are those used to determine the
name of the encoding, by treating them, in the order given, as a
sequence of ASCII characters. Bytes marked "YY" are similar, but
need to be transcoded into ASCII as noted. User agents may ignore
entries in the table if they do not support any encodings relevant
to the entry.
Initial Bytes Result
EF BB BF 40 63 68 61 72 73 65 74 20 22 (XX)* 22 3B as specified
EF BB BF UTF-8
40 63 68 61 72 73 65 74 20 22 (XX)* 22 3B as specified
FE FF 00 40 00 63 00 68 00 61 00 72 00 73 00 65 00 74 00 20 00 22 (00
XX)* 00 22 00 3B as specified (with BE endianness if not specified)
00 40 00 63 00 68 00 61 00 72 00 73 00 65 00 74 00 20 00 22 (00 XX)*
00 22 00 3B as specified (with BE endianness if not specified)
FF FE 40 00 63 00 68 00 61 00 72 00 73 00 65 00 74 00 20 00 22 00 (XX
00)* 22 00 3B 00 as specified (with LE endianness if not specified)
40 00 63 00 68 00 61 00 72 00 73 00 65 00 74 00 20 00 22 00 (XX 00)*
22 00 3B 00 as specified (with LE endianness if not specified)
00 00 FE FF 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 63 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 61 00 00 00
72 00 00 00 73 00 00 00 65 00 00 00 74 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 22 (00 00
00 XX)* 00 00 00 22 00 00 00 3B as specified (with BE endianness if
not specified)
00 00 00 40 00 00 00 63 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 61 00 00 00 72 00 00 00
73 00 00 00 65 00 00 00 74 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 22 (00 00 00 XX)* 00
00 00 22 00 00 00 3B as specified (with BE endianness if not
specified)
00 00 FF FE 00 00 40 00 00 00 63 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 61 00 00 00 72
00 00 00 73 00 00 00 65 00 00 00 74 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 22 00 (00 00
XX 00)* 00 00 22 00 00 00 3B 00 as specified (with 2143 endianness if
not specified)
00 00 40 00 00 00 63 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 61 00 00 00 72 00 00 00 73
00 00 00 65 00 00 00 74 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 22 00 (00 00 XX 00)* 00
00 22 00 00 00 3B 00 as specified (with 2143 endianness if not
specified)
FE FF 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 63 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 61 00 00 00 72 00
00 00 73 00 00 00 65 00 00 00 74 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 22 00 00 (00 XX
00 00)* 00 22 00 00 00 3B 00 00 as specified (with 3412 endianness if
not specified)
00 40 00 00 00 63 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 61 00 00 00 72 00 00 00 73 00
00 00 65 00 00 00 74 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 22 00 00 (00 XX 00 00)* 00
22 00 00 00 3B 00 00 as specified (with 3412 endianness if not
specified)
FF FE 00 00 40 00 00 00 63 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 61 00 00 00 72 00 00
00 73 00 00 00 65 00 00 00 74 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 22 00 00 00 (XX 00
00 00)* 22 00 00 00 3B 00 00 00 as specified (with LE endianness if
not specified)
40 00 00 00 63 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 61 00 00 00 72 00 00 00 73 00 00
00 65 00 00 00 74 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 22 00 00 00 (XX 00 00 00)* 22
00 00 00 3B 00 00 00 as specified (with LE endianness if not
specified)
00 00 FE FF UTF-32-BE
FF FE 00 00 UTF-32-LE
00 00 FF FE UTF-32-2143
FE FF 00 00 UTF-32-3412
FE FF UTF-16-BE
FF FE UTF-16-LE
7C 83 88 81 99 A2 85 A3 40 7F (YY)* 7F 5E as specified, transcoded
from EBCDIC to ASCII
AE 83 88 81 99 A2 85 A3 40 FC (YY)* FC 5E as specified, transcoded
from IBM1026 to ASCII
00 63 68 61 72 73 65 74 20 22 (YY)* 22 3B as specified, transcoded
from GSM 03.38 to ASCII
analogous patterns User agents may support additional, analogous,
patterns if they support encodings that are not handled by the
patterns here
* If the encoding is detected based on one of the entries in the
table above marked "as specified", the user agent ignores the
style sheet if it does not parse an appropriate @charset rule at
the beginning of the stream of characters resulting from decoding
in the chosen @charset. This ensures that:
+ @charset rules should only function if they are in the
encoding of the style sheet,
+ byte order marks are ignored only in encodings that support a
byte order mark, and
+ encoding names cannot contain newlines.
User agents must ignore style sheets in unknown encodings.
4.4.1 Referring to characters not represented in a character encoding
A style sheet may have to refer to characters that cannot be
represented in the current character encoding. These characters must
be written as escaped references to ISO 10646 characters. These
escapes serve the same purpose as numeric character references in HTML
or XML documents (see [HTML4], chapters 5 and 25).
The character escape mechanism should be used when only a few
characters must be represented this way. If most of a style sheet
requires escaping, authors should encode it with a more appropriate
encoding (e.g., if the style sheet contains a lot of Greek characters,
authors might use "ISO-8859-7" or "UTF-8").
Intermediate processors using a different character encoding may
translate these escaped sequences into byte sequences of that
encoding. Intermediate processors must not, on the other hand, alter
escape sequences that cancel the special meaning of an ASCII
character.
Conforming user agents must correctly map to ISO-10646 all characters
in any character encodings that they recognize (or they must behave as
if they did).
For example, a style sheet transmitted as ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) cannot
contain Greek letters directly: "kouro*s" (Greek: "kouros") has to be
written as "\3BA\3BF\3C5\3C1\3BF\3C2".
Note. In HTML 4, numeric character references are interpreted in
"style" attribute values but not in the content of the STYLE element.
Because of this asymmetry, we recommend that authors use the CSS
character escape mechanism rather than numeric character references
for both the "style" attribute and the STYLE element. For example, we
recommend:
...
rather than:
...
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
5 Selectors
Contents
* 5.1 Pattern matching
* 5.2 Selector syntax
+ 5.2.1 Grouping
* 5.3 Universal selector
* 5.4 Type selectors
* 5.5 Descendant selectors
* 5.6 Child selectors
* 5.7 Adjacent sibling selectors
* 5.8 Attribute selectors
+ 5.8.1 Matching attributes and attribute values
+ 5.8.2 Default attribute values in DTDs
+ 5.8.3 Class selectors
* 5.9 ID selectors
* 5.10 Pseudo-elements and pseudo-classes
* 5.11 Pseudo-classes
+ 5.11.1 :first-child pseudo-class
+ 5.11.2 The link pseudo-classes: :link and :visited
+ 5.11.3 The dynamic pseudo-classes: :hover, :active, and
:focus
+ 5.11.4 The language pseudo-class: :lang
* 5.12 Pseudo-elements
+ 5.12.1 The :first-line pseudo-element
+ 5.12.2 The :first-letter pseudo-element
+ 5.12.3 The :before and :after pseudo-elements
5.1 Pattern matching
In CSS, pattern matching rules determine which style rules apply to
elements in the document tree. These patterns, called selectors, may
range from simple element names to rich contextual patterns. If all
conditions in the pattern are true for a certain element, the selector
matches the element.
The case-sensitivity of document language element names in selectors
depends on the document language. For example, in HTML, element names
are case-insensitive, but in XML they are case-sensitive.
The following table summarizes CSS 2.1 selector syntax:
Pattern Meaning Described in section
* Matches any element. Universal selector
E Matches any E element (i.e., an element of type E). Type selectors
E F Matches any F element that is a descendant of an E element.
Descendant selectors
E > F Matches any F element that is a child of an element E. Child
selectors
E:first-child Matches element E when E is the first child of its
parent. The :first-child pseudo-class
E:link
E:visited Matches element E if E is the source anchor of a hyperlink
of which the target is not yet visited (:link) or already visited
(:visited). The link pseudo-classes
E:active
E:hover
E:focus Matches E during certain user actions. The dynamic
pseudo-classes
E:lang(c) Matches element of type E if it is in (human) language c
(the document language specifies how language is determined). The
:lang() pseudo-class
E + F Matches any F element immediately preceded by a sibling element
E. Adjacent selectors
E[foo] Matches any E element with the "foo" attribute set (whatever
the value). Attribute selectors
E[foo="warning"] Matches any E element whose "foo" attribute value is
exactly equal to "warning". Attribute selectors
E[foo~="warning"] Matches any E element whose "foo" attribute value is
a list of space-separated values, one of which is exactly equal to
"warning". Attribute selectors
E[lang|="en"] Matches any E element whose "lang" attribute has a
hyphen-separated list of values beginning (from the left) with "en".
Attribute selectors
DIV.warning Language specific. (In HTML, the same as
DIV[class~="warning"].) Class selectors
E#myid Matches any E element with ID equal to "myid". ID selectors
5.2 Selector syntax
A simple selector is either a type selector or universal selector
followed immediately by zero or more attribute selectors, ID
selectors, or pseudo-classes, in any order. The simple selector
matches if all of its components match.
Note: the terminology used here in CSS 2.1 is different from what is
used in CSS3. For example, a "simple selector" refers to a smaller
part of a selector in CSS3 than in CSS 2.1. See the CSS3 Selectors
module [CSS3SEL].
A selector is a chain of one or more simple selectors separated by
combinators. Combinators are: whitespace, ">", and "+". Whitespace may
appear between a combinator and the simple selectors around it.
The elements of the document tree that match a selector are called
subjects of the selector. A selector consisting of a single simple
selector matches any element satisfying its requirements. Prepending a
simple selector and combinator to a chain imposes additional matching
constraints, so the subjects of a selector are always a subset of the
elements matching the last simple selector.
One pseudo-element may be appended to the last simple selector in a
chain, in which case the style information applies to a subpart of
each subject.
5.2.1 Grouping
When several selectors share the same declarations, they may be
grouped into a comma-separated list.
Example(s):
In this example, we condense three rules with identical declarations
into one. Thus,
h1 { font-family: sans-serif }
h2 { font-family: sans-serif }
h3 { font-family: sans-serif }
is equivalent to:
h1, h2, h3 { font-family: sans-serif }
CSS offers other "shorthand" mechanisms as well, including multiple
declarations and shorthand properties.
5.3 Universal selector
The universal selector, written "*", matches the name of any element
type. It matches any single element in the document tree.
If the universal selector is not the only component of a simple
selector, the "*" may be omitted. For example:
* *[lang=fr] and [lang=fr] are equivalent.
* *.warning and .warning are equivalent.
* *#myid and #myid are equivalent.
5.4 Type selectors
A type selector matches the name of a document language element type.
A type selector matches every instance of the element type in the
document tree.
Example(s):
The following rule matches all H1 elements in the document tree:
h1 { font-family: sans-serif }
5.5 Descendant selectors
At times, authors may want selectors to match an element that is the
descendant of another element in the document tree (e.g., "Match those
EM elements that are contained by an H1 element"). Descendant
selectors express such a relationship in a pattern. A descendant
selector is made up of two or more selectors separated by whitespace.
A descendant selector of the form "A B" matches when an element B is
an arbitrary descendant of some ancestor element A.
Example(s):
For example, consider the following rules:
h1 { color: red }
em { color: red }
Although the intention of these rules is to add emphasis to text by
changing its color, the effect will be lost in a case such as:
This headline is very important
We address this case by supplementing the previous rules with a rule
that sets the text color to blue whenever an EM occurs anywhere within
an H1:
h1 { color: red }
em { color: red }
h1 em { color: blue }
The third rule will match the EM in the following fragment:
This headline
is very important
Example(s):
The following selector:
div * p
matches a P element that is a grandchild or later descendant of a DIV
element. Note the whitespace on either side of the "*" is not part of
the universal selector; the whitespace is a combinator indicating that
the DIV must be the ancestor of some element, and that that element
must be an ancestor of the P.
Example(s):
The selector in the following rule, which combines descendant and
attribute selectors, matches any element that (1) has the "href"
attribute set and (2) is inside a P that is itself inside a DIV:
div p *[href]
5.6 Child selectors
A child selector matches when an element is the child of some element.
A child selector is made up of two or more selectors separated by ">".
Example(s):
The following rule sets the style of all P elements that are children
of BODY:
body > P { line-height: 1.3 }
Example(s):
The following example combines descendant selectors and child
selectors:
div ol>li p
It matches a P element that is a descendant of an LI; the LI element
must be the child of an OL element; the OL element must be a
descendant of a DIV. Notice that the optional whitespace around the
">" combinator has been left out.
For information on selecting the first child of an element, please see
the section on the :first-child pseudo-class below.
5.7 Adjacent sibling selectors
Adjacent sibling selectors have the following syntax: E1 + E2, where
E2 is the subject of the