A pseudo-class is used to define a special state of an element, while a pseudo-element is used to style specified parts of an element.
Pseudo-Classes
A pseudo-class can be used to:
- Style an element when a user moves the cursor over it (hover)
- Style visited and unvisited links differently as a visual cue to the user
- Style an element when it gets focus, such as a form field
Styling Links
a:link {
color: green;
text-decoration: none;
}
a:visited {
color: darkgreen;
text-decoration: none;
}
a:hover {
color: red;
text-decoration: underline;
}
a:active {
color: orange;
text-decoration: underline;
}
Styling Form Inputs
input:focus {
border: red solid thin;
}
Pseudo-Elements
A pseudo-element can be used to:
- Style the first letter or first line of an element
- Insert content before the content of an element
- Insert content after the content of an element
ul li::before {
content: "added info before - ";
}
ul li::after {
content: " - added info after";
}
We’d like to acknowledge that we learned a great deal of our coding from W3Schools and TutorialsPoint, borrowing heavily from their teaching process and excellent code examples. We highly recommend both sites to deepen your experience, and further your coding journey. We’re just hitting the basics here at 1SMARTchicken.
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CSS NOTES:
- The “inherit”, “initial” and “unset” keywords can be used with any CSS property to set its value
- In CSS there are many ways to express a color value in a property
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