Pseudo-Classes and Pseudo-Elements
There will be cases where you'll want to apply styling to certain states of your elements. For example:
- Hovering over an element
- Checking a checkbox
- Highlighting the first or last element
- Highlighting every other element
Pseudo-Classes
For these specific states, we can use pseudo-classes, which have a format like this:
.button:hover {
background-color: red;
}
Notice that the CSS selectors is followed by a single colon, then the name of the pseudo-class. These selectors can be handy when compared to the alternative (using JavaScript). Here are some examples:
See the Pen Pseudo Classes by Brian Hague (@bhague1281) on CodePen.
Pseudo-Elements
Similar to pseudo-classes, we can also use pseudo-elements. These selectors have two big differences from pseudo-classes.
- Instead of styling element state, pseudo-elements style parts of a document
- Instead of a single colon, pseudo-elements are defined with two colons.
Specifically, pseudo-elements can style first lines, first letters, as well as things you wouldn't normally think of, like the color of selected text.
See the Pen Pseudo-Elements by Brian Hague (@bhague1281) on CodePen.
For more pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements, see the Additional Topics links.