Styling nested lists with any depth - css

Question

I was wondering if it's possible to style nested unordered lists with CSS only, without using any scripts. The problem is that CSS needs to work for any depth of the list tree.
For example, I have a list:
<ul>
<li>Item 1</li>
<li>Item 2</li>
<li>Item 3</li>
<li class="holder">
<ul>
<li>Item 4</li>
<li>Item 5</li>
<li class="holder">
<ul>
<li>Item 6</li>
<li>Item 7</li>
<li>Item 8</li>
<li class="holder">
<ul>
<li>Item 9</li>
<li>Item 10</li>
<li>Item 11</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
And this is my CSS:
li{
background: gray;
border: 1px solid;
display: block;
margin: 2px;
}
.holder{
background: none;
border: none;
}
/*replace these styles*/
li > ul > li{
background: white;
}
li > ul > li > ul > li{
background: gray;
}
li > ul > li > ul > li > ul > li{
background: white;
}
If node's parent has background A, node should have background B. If node's parent has background B, node should have background A.
Please check : http://jsfiddle.net/bCU34/6/

Answer 1

CSS selectors allow you to select all named elements of a parent node by separating the named element from the parent element with a space. To select all unordered list elements, for example, you would do like below. Notice all ul elements at any depth inherit the style no bullets/margin/padding. In order do style nth layer for an element type, you need to use the parent selector >. See below. I used font color but you could set background images the same way. Note there is no decendant level selector at this time that I know of. This was addressed on another post CSS select nested elements up to N levels deep.
.container ul {
list-style-type: none;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
.container > ul > li {
color: green;
}
.container > ul > li > ul > li {
color: red;
}
.container > ul > li > ul > li > ul > li {
color: blue;
}
<section class="container">
<h1>CSS Nested List Styling</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<h3>Section 1</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<h4>Foo</h4>
<ul>
<li>
<h5>Bar</h5>
</li>
<li>
<h5>Bar</h5>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<h4>Foo Bar</h4>
<ul>
<li>
<h5>Bar</h5>
</li>
<li>
<h5>Bar</h5>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<h3>Section 2</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<h4>Hello</h4>
<ul>
<li>
<h5>World</h5>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</section>

Answer 2

There isn’t any specific way of doing this currently with Selectors level 3, and the current draft of Selectors level 4 doesn’t seem to add anything either. I had a dig through the www-style mailing list and came up with this post by Lachlan Hunt from April 2005 that suggests that an :nth-descendant() style selector had been considered but never specified.