CSS ID and Class

The id and class Selectors

In addition to setting a style for a HTML element, CSS allows you to specify your own selectors called "id" and "class".

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The id Selector

The id selector is used to specify a style for a single, unique element.

The id selector uses the id attribute of the HTML element, and is defined with a "#".

The style rule below will be applied to the element with id="para1":

Example

#para1
{
text-align:center;
color:red;
}

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 Do NOT start an ID name with a number! It will not work in Mozilla/Firefox.

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The class Selector

The class selector is used to specify a style for a group of elements. Unlike the id selector, the class selector is most often used on several elements.

This allows you to set a particular style for many HTML elements with the same class.

The class selector uses the HTML class attribute, and is defined with a "."

In the example below, all HTML elements with class="center" will be center-aligned:

Example

.center {text-align:center;}

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You can also specify that only specific HTML elements should be affected by a class.

In the example below, all p elements with class="center" will be center-aligned:

Example

p.center {text-align:center;}

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 Do NOT start a class name with a number! This is only supported in Internet Explorer.

CSS Syntax

Examples

• Look at Example 1
• Look at Example 2

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CSS Syntax

A CSS rule has two main parts: a selector, and one or more declarations:

The selector is normally the HTML element you want to style.

Each declaration consists of a property and a value.

The property is the style attribute you want to change. Each property has a value.

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CSS Example

A CSS declaration always ends with a semicolon, and declaration groups are surrounded by curly brackets:

p {color:red;text-align:center;}

To make the CSS more readable, you can put one declaration on each line, like this:

Example

p
{
color:red;
text-align:center;
}

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CSS Comments

Comments are used to explain your code, and may help you when you edit the source code at a later date. Comments are ignored by browsers.

A CSS comment begins with "/*", and ends with "*/", like this:

/*This is a comment*/
p
{
text-align:center;
/*This is another comment*/
color:black;
font-family:arial;
}

CSS Introduction

What You Should Already Know

Before you continue you should have a basic understanding of the following:

• HTML / XHTML

If you want to study these subjects first, find the tutorials on our Home page.

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What is CSS?

• CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets
• Styles define how to display HTML elements
• Styles were added to HTML 4.0 to solve a problem
• External Style Sheets can save a lot of work
• External Style Sheets are stored in CSS files

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CSS Demo

An HTML document can be displayed with different styles: See how it works

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Styles Solved a Big Problem

HTML was never intended to contain tags for formatting a document.

HTML was intended to define the content of a document, like:

<h1>This is a heading</h1>

<p>This is a paragraph.</p>

When tags like <font>, and color attributes were added to the HTML 3.2 specification, it started a nightmare for web developers. Development of large web sites, where fonts and color information were added to every single page, became a long and expensive process.

To solve this problem, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) created CSS.

In HTML 4.0, all formatting could be removed from the HTML document, and stored in a separate CSS file.

All browsers support CSS today.

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CSS Saves a Lot of Work!

CSS defines HOW HTML elements are to be displayed.

Styles are normally saved in external .css files. External style sheets enable you to change the appearance and layout of all the pages in a Web site, just by editing one single file!

CSS Tutorial

Save a lot of work with CSS!

In our CSS tutorial you will learn how to use CSS to control the style and layout of multiple Web pages all at once.

CSS Example

body
{
background-color:#d0e4fe;
}
h1
{
color:orange;
text-align:center;
}
p
{
font-family:"Times New Roman";
font-size:20px;
}

Try it yourself »

Click on the "Try it Yourself" button to see how it works.

CSS Examples

Learn from over 150 examples! With our editor, you can edit the CSS, and click on a button to view the result.

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CSS References

At W3Schools you will find complete CSS references of all properties and selectors with syntax, examples, browser support, and more.

CSS Properties Reference

CSS Selectors Reference

CSS Aural Reference

CSS Units

CSS Color Reference