CSS inheritance broken? - css

Question

i have nested lists with links inside the li tags. On nesting level x I want to change the appearance of the links. Just some sample code:
CSS:
.blue a { color: blue; }
.red a { color: red; }
HTML:
<ul>
<li class="blue">blue-1</li>
<li class="red">red-1</li>
<li class="blue">blue-2
<ul>
<li>
blue-3
<ul>
<li class="red">
red-2
<ul>
<li>red-3</li>
<li>red-4</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>blue-4</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="">blue-5</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="red">red-5
<ul>
<li>red-6</li>
<li>red-7</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
In that way it is working as expected. Links with text red-* are in red. But when I change the order of the CSS classes, it is not longer working:
.red a { color: red; }
.blue a { color: blue; }
Why this behavior? Shouldn't it be the same?
I have to use more colors than red and blue, so it is impossible to give a correct order in CSS.

Answer 1

Css selector precedence is set according to how specific it is:
every tag is counted as 1 point
every class as 10 points
event id as 100 points
Both selectors you got have the same precedence, so that one which is set further in code overrides previous ones.

Answer 2

The reason for this is that in your css you're telling every a tags that are child, grandchild, etc. elements of a class named blue. And that's getting overidden when you're telling that every a tags that are child, grandchild, etc. elements of a class named red should be red.
So instead of doing this (affecting all link tags)
.blue a { color: blue; }
.red a { color: red; }
You could do this (affects only the first child if it's a link tag):
.red > a,
.red > ul > li > a{ color: red; }
.blue > a,
.blue > ul > li > a { color: blue; }
What that second line does is it finds all elements that has a class name red. Then it finds all direct child ul elements. And under those matching elements it finds all direct child li elements that has direct child a elements. Matching these, it finally adds styles.
JSFiddle:
http://jsfiddle.net/Y9jFr/