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Selector Combinations

Let’s dig into the details of strategies for targeting HTML elements.

We'll cover the following...

Selecting multiple elements

To select multiple elements, separate the selectors by commas:

/* Selecting multiple HTML element types */
h1, p {
  border: 1px solid black;
}

/* Selecting styles to be applied to several classes */
.ingredientsList, .instructionsList {
  font-size: 1.2em;
}

/* Using multiple kinds of selectors*/
h3, .red, #redElement{
  color: red;
}

Exercise

Give a color property (with a value of orange) to all the header elements (elements with the h1 or h2 tags) on the page with a single CSS rule.

Test your learning 
Selecting nested elements
Say we have a div element that contains several HTML elements:
<div>
  <h1>Selecting Nested Elements with CSS</h1>
  <p>We can specify to only style elements within this div.</p>
  <div>
    <p>Elements can have any level of nesting and still be selected correctly.</p>
  </div>
</div>
In this HTML, there is a div (the parent element) that has three children elements. The nested div also contains a single child. Remember that HTML creates a tree-like structure:
Tree structure of HTML shown above
Tree structure of HTML shown above
To select for only the children of a certain parent element, you must indicate the parent element and then the child element, with a > bracket in between them.


/* select only for h1 elements within div's */
div > h1 {
  border-bottom: 1px solid black;
}



This mechanism can select elements with any level of nesting, by adding an additional selector separated by a space.


Styling nested elements with CSS
Take a moment and answer the following question before proceeding further.
How would you rewrite the CSS rules into one single rule for the above nested elements CSS code?
Q
(True or False) Considering that we have two CSS rules in the code above, it is also possible to create a single rule that achieves the same result.


A)
True


B)
False


Exercise
The code below includes HTML and partially written CSS. Do the following two tasks:
  • Apply the border-bottom (border colour must be black) CSS property to h1 elements with a class or id attribute.
  • Apply the font-style CSS property (with a value of italic) to p elements with a class or id attribute.
Test your learning