Mastering Specificity and Specificity Calculation
Explore the concept of CSS specificity and how to calculate its values to determine which styles apply when multiple rules target the same element. Understand the influence of inline styles, IDs, classes, and elements on specificity, and learn strategies to write organized, maintainable CSS. This lesson guides you through comparisons, overrides, and best practices for managing specificity effectively.
In this lesson, we’ll explore CSS specificity and how to calculate it. Specificity determines which CSS rules apply when multiple selectors target the same element. Understanding specificity helps us write CSS that behaves predictably and avoids unintended style overrides.
Understanding specificity
Specificity is a scoring system used by browsers to determine which CSS rule to apply when there are conflicting declarations. It is calculated based on the components of the selector.
Calculating specificity
Specificity is expressed as a four-part value (a, b, c, d) from highest to lowest:
a: Inline styles
b: Number of ID selectors
c: Number of class selectors, attributes, pseudo-classes
d: Number of element selectors, pseudo-elements
Consider the following specificity calculations for different CSS selectors.
