Simple selector question

[Jim Garrison]

In reading someone else's stylesheet I ran across the following
two selectors, in the following order.

#footer .label { ... }

[id]#footer .label { ... }
Are these not identical in effect? If not, I'm missing something
about attribute selectors. My reasoning is that in the second selector
[id] is redundant, since anything matching #footer MUST have an id
attribute. (There was no space between the [id] and the #footer).

I looked in the W3C 2.1 spec, and the only thing I could find is that
the second selector has a slightly higher specificity because of the
explicit [id], so it will ALWAYS take precedence over the first rule.

Is this correct?

TIA

Jim Garrison
jhg at acm dot org

[Jim Moe]

Jim Garrison wrote:

I looked in the W3C 2.1 spec, and the only thing I could find is that
the second selector has a slightly higher specificity because of the
explicit [id], so it will ALWAYS take precedence over the first rule.

Is this correct?

All other things being equal, yes.
The ruleset with the greatest specificity wins.

--
jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

[David Dorward]

Jim Garrison wrote:

In reading someone else's stylesheet I ran across the following
two selectors, in the following order.

#footer .label { ... }

[id]#footer .label { ... }

Internet Explorer does not support attribute selectors. This could be being
used as a technique to apply additional styles only to MSIE.

--
David Dorward <http://blog.dorward.me.uk/> <http://dorward.me.uk/>
Home is where the ~/.bashrc is

[Jim Garrison]

David Dorward wrote:

Jim Garrison wrote:

In reading someone else's stylesheet I ran across the following
two selectors, in the following order.

#footer .label { ... }

[id]#footer .label { ... }

Internet Explorer does not support attribute selectors. This could be being
used as a technique to apply additional styles only to MSIE.

Are you saying that the first selector would be used by MSIE, but the
second one would apply in browsers that support attribute selectors?

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Mon, 24 Apr 2006, Jim Garrison wrote:

David Dorward wrote:

Jim Garrison wrote:

In reading someone else's stylesheet I ran across the following
two selectors, in the following order.

#footer .label { ... }

[id]#footer .label { ... }

Internet Explorer does not support attribute selectors. This could
be being used as a technique to apply additional styles only to
MSIE.

Are you saying that the first selector would be used by MSIE, but the
second one would apply in browsers that support attribute selectors?

*Both* of them would apply in supporting browsers, but in the
case of a clash in values, the second one (having higher priority)
would win.

[frederick]

Alan J. Flavell wrote:

On Mon, 24 Apr 2006, Jim Garrison wrote:

David Dorward wrote:

Jim Garrison wrote:
> In reading someone else's stylesheet I ran across the following
> two selectors, in the following order.
>
> #footer .label { ... }
>
> [id]#footer .label { ... }

Internet Explorer does not support attribute selectors. This could
be being used as a technique to apply additional styles only to
MSIE.

Are you saying that the first selector would be used by MSIE, but the
second one would apply in browsers that support attribute selectors?

*Both* of them would apply in supporting browsers, but in the
case of a clash in values, the second one (having higher priority)
would win.

It's a less-robust method of achieving the same end as conditional
comments, although with the negligible advantage of only needing one
stylesheet.
--
AGw.