CSS change an element content on hover from different element - css

Question

Is it possible in CSS to change an element's content when hovered from a different element? Let's say for example, I have this divs A, B, C, D, E, F. I want to show some text in A when I hover in B. a different text will appear in A if I hover over in C. and the same goes for the rest. All the changes takes place in A when hovered in divs B to F.

Answer 1

Currently this is not possible with CSS only. You can adjust the styles of children or upcoming siblings. But you can't set the styles of previous siblings or parent elements.
So regarding your case you could do:
<div class="a"></div>
<div class="b"></div>
<div class="c"></div>
CSS
/* next sibling only */
div.a:hover + div.b { /* styles for b when hovering a */ }
/* general sibling selector */
div.a:hover ~ div.c { /* styles for c when hovering a */ }
div.b:hover ~ div.c { /* styles for c when hovering b */ }
You can't go the other way, from b to a for example.
Demo
Try before buy

Answer 2

This is possible using the general sibling selector ~ and by having a matching div to go with each of the hovered divs. This works in the latest version of all browsers. http://jsfiddle.net/s8uwu/
HTML
<div id="a">Hello A</div>
<div id="b">Hello B</div>
<div id="c">Hello C</div>
<div id="d">Hello D</div>
<div id="e">Hello E</div>
<div id="text">
<div class="a">From A</div>
<div class="b">From B</div>
<div class="c">From C</div>
<div class="d">From D</div>
<div class="e">From E</div>
</div>
CSS
#a:hover~#text .a,
#b:hover~#text .b,
#c:hover~#text .c,
#d:hover~#text .d,
#e:hover~#text .e{
display: block;
}
#text div{
display: none;
}

Answer 3

Simply from its name, CSS(Cascading Style Sheet) is only for applying style/appearance in a convenient way.
Hence it does not at all deal with the content of an web-page.
However You definitely can do it with the help of JavaScript as follows-
<div id="a" onmouseover="document.getElementById('b').innerHTML='ijkl';">abcd</div>
<div id="b">efgh</div>