Conditional CSS file doesn't override regular CSS - css

I am using conditional comments to link to a css file (let's call it "IEonly.css") if the IE version is less than 8. I am trying to override some properties in the regular css file. Strangely enough, IEonly.css will set new css properties correctly, but it won't override the properties in the regular CSS file!
(I am trying to make this work for IE7).
Help!
EDIT: I added an !important after the css style to see if it would help. It didn't.

Given multiple stylesheets (even if some are hidden from other browsers with conditional comments) then the normal rules of the cascade will apply.
Make sure your selectors are suitably specific, and that you apply the stylesheets in the right order.

If you are using the same selectors in both stylesheets then you should be fine as long as you place the conditional IE stylesheet after the regular stylesheet. If you do that and your IE sheet isn't taking then you might need to write more specific selectors.
#sidebar #nav li a { }
instead of...
#nav li a { }
or
li a { }

Don't forget that you can also use the !important rule to override CSS definitions. Here is the W3C documentation on that rule.

Perhaps you can reorganize the stylesheets to default to IE styles and use an if !IE conditional for "good browser" overrides.

Based on my own experience of similar problems I would guess that there are some bad or missing character lurking somewhere in your IEonly.css file. They can be a real pain to track down, so do the following:
Temporarily remove all CSS from IEonly.css, except for the part that you will use to override the normal CSS. Test to see if this works. If it does, continue to paste the code back into the file, in sections as you see fit. Hopefully you'll find the problem.
If your override did not work when only that part of the code existed in the file, make sure that you have the correct selectors and that the specificity is OK.
You can also try reading http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/cascade.html#important-rules for more information.
Can you publish some code for us to look at? That would help.

I added a class to the element and referenced it on the IEonly stylesheet with the class selector and the regular style sheet without. This caused the IEonly style declaration to override the regular one.

Related

Laravel overriding bootstrap template

So I got my custom app.css in my project and I'm using bootstrap template. Now when I create new button style for example in app.css it's accessible everywhere (on every page since I got master template and other pages are extending it) but when I override bootstrap theme in app.css it's not working. When I use same code to override bootstrap on top of the page using <style> tags it's working. app.css is included properly and after bootstrap.css so any idea what I'm doing wrong ?
Try a cache refresh, for me in Chrome, I use Ctrl+Shift+R.
If this doesn't produce any results, use the inbuilt inspectors on Chrome or Firefox to view the attached properties to the element you are editing. If the app.css is overriding the bootstrap.css, you will see something like the below image, showing the app.css is above the skin-purple.min.css meaning the app.css was the latest to be loaded.
I would say that there is a hierarchy, try to include the bootstrap.css after the app.css, you could also give those css attribute an !important like so:
#bla {
display:none !important
}
But that is not a good practice I think, it may be ok if you do not override alot of the bootstrap.css
You could also try this:
http://bootstrap-live-customizer.com/
to customize your bootstrap.
It most probably is a style precedence issue. I found this article very useful to at least understand what goes on with style precedence and what specificity is.
In your very case it may be helpful to simply use a class selector such as
.mybutton button{
color: blue;
font-size: inherit;
...
}
and give your buttons the attribute class="mybutton". In the class definition you may freely override whatever you want and also let other properties be inherited from Bootstrap.
There is also the !important rule. However, it is usually referred to as a bad practice, since it breaks the normal cascading rules and makes debugging an incredibly painful task.

gwt how to use setStyleName(String style, boolean add) - for a gwt standard widget

I want to style/mark a MenuItem in GWT MenuBar. So i have some logic that adds a style name to a menu item (the logic is working properly).
mItem.setStyleName("menuItemMarked", true);
with this set getStyleName yields "gwt-MenuItem menuItemMarked" as expected.
But how to use/apply this style in css (at the moment i put css in uibinder.xml)? (as you may see i am not a css expert)
update: what i tried is that.
.menuItemMarked{background-color: yellow}
this is not working. if i call "inspect element"(chrome) i can see "class="gwt-MenuItem menuItemMarked" but i can not find the style "menuItemMarked" in the list of applied styles?!
Where are you specifying your CSS?
If your code is located within your code packages, it is likely being obfuscated by the GWT compiler. This applies to <ui:style> blocks in .ui.xml files, and .css files included in ClientBundles.
In this case, you will want to check out Programmatic Access to Inline Styles from the GWT docs. This will allow you to change your code to:
mItem.setStyleName(style.menuItemMarked(), true);
Alternatively, you can tell GWT to not obfuscate certain CSS classes. Here is a detailed answer to a similar question
Finally, if GWT does not touch your CSS file (it is being served from your server like other files), then you will need to make sure that your file is being included in your page properly. Your browser's dev tools should be able to help with that.
Make sure you specify correct selector name in your css. In this case you need to have following:
.gwt-MenuItem.menuItemMarked {
background-color: yellow;
}
Since gwt-MenuItem remains the first class name in the list it takes precedence over any styles (incl. background-color) defined in the subsequent classes. The only way to overrule this is to define styles with more specific selector like above. Check this link out for more detailed explanation.

CSS Files and Unwanted Overriding

I have a simple HTML page that is referencing 3 CSS files. The first is a style sheet that is just for the page. The other two are for the styles of two unique modals. These modal CSS files were not created by me and they are happily being used separately on other pages throughout the site.
My problem is that both of these modal CSS files contain a few common selectors and so they are messing up each other's styles.
I understand that the best way to fix this problem is to take one or both of the files and make their selectors unique. One way would be to namespace the selectors.
My questions is, however, now that I'm knee-deep in this page, is there anyway to prevent these CSS conflicts without changing the modal CSS pages as they currently stand? Are there any tools that can help such as LESS? What is the best practice for preventing this in the future?
The best solution indeed would be to refactor those css-files to your need.
However, an easier solution would be to include your stylesheet after those two third-party css-files and re-declare the styles for the common selectors, which automatically overrides the previous settings.
LESS/SASS are excellent tools to help you write CSS faster and more comfortable. I use SASS for private work and really recommend it. They can't help you though with issues like you have atm.
EDIT:
Using !important is possible, but considered bad habit, as it was intended to give the user the possibility to override author-styles with his own. Instead of using !important what you should do is:
Avoid duplicate styles as much as you can.
if you can't avoid this, try to resolve this by either:
cascading (=using the proper sequence to override previous styles)
using selector specificity (W3C-Spec).
Assuming:
...
<link rel="stylesheet" href="this_page.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="modal_1.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="modal_2.css" />
...
Due to the cascading nature of CSS (sorry, I had to) using the same selector over and over overrides any previous styles. Thus, if modal_1.css and modal_2.css both apply style x to the body tag, for example, the second stylesheet will override the first.
The sad part is that there is no way out other than to, as you suggested, modify the two selectors to make them more specific.
Looking to the future, the best way to avoid overriding previously declared styles, is to always be specific about the particular element you are targeting, and it's proper place in the DOM. Note that LESS is simply a CSS preprocessor, which only allows you a different syntax for CSS.
I would suggest to a common class add into body tag of that particular page & target using that particular class. If you tools like LESS or Compass you can easily achieve the aim.
.pageOne{ /*All the styles for this perticular page*/
.header{
}
.sidebar{
}
}
When parse through LESS or Compass it will look like following.
.pageOne .header{}
.pageOne .sidebar{}
This way your page will get a namespace.

Preventing styles of html elements created by firefox plugin getting overridden by the sites stylesheet

I am injecting some html + css into every page from my firefox plugin. But this styles is sometimes getting overridden by the style sheet. I want to stop this behavior.
I know this can be solved by some css tricks. Adding !important for instance. But is there a way available in firefox or xul to do this easily?
Using !important alone is not enough, the webpage could do the same and still override your styls. You can use the Stylesheet Service to register a user stylesheet. If you then use !important then web pages will no longer be able to override your styles.
Note that user stylesheets are always global and apply to all webpages as well as browser's own XUL documents. You can restrict them to particular webpages using #-moz-document.
#MEGA_PLUNGIN a {}
#MEGA_PLUNGIN span {}
#MEGA_PLUNGIN div {}
#MEGA_PLUNGIN table {}
...
Not the best solution but right...
To me, this is one case where you would certainly use !important.
That said, you can try to use specificity to ensure your styles are being set.
So, make sure that you are targeting the elements are precisely as possible, in order to override those styles that are not as specific.
For instance, if you have this structure
<body>
<div>
<h1 class="something">
<a href>
The site's styles may target
h1.something a{
You should aim to do this
body div h1.something a{
which is more specific and would override the above styles.
The other thing you might be able to do is append your styles just before the </head>, which would make them appear last in the cascade, and, if they are equal, will be applied.

CSS reset that applies only to #widget

Let's say I have widget that uses complicated CSS, and must be embedded in multiple websites that all have their CSSes.
If I prefix all widget's CSS rules with "#widget", they won't apply to anything on the outside, so one problem fixed. Unfortunately CSS rules of the site can still mess the widget.
If I reset all CSS inside #widget with proper reset rules, then hopefully they will override all outside rules, right? (because my rules use #id and outside rules don't know any ids inside my widget, they cannot override them, right? !important notwithstanding)
What's the best way to reset all CSS to known state? Most CSS resets start from browser defaults, they don't reset arbitrary CSSes. Is there any CSS reset that works no matter what?
I came across cleanslate.css while trying to solve the same problem:
https://github.com/premasagar/cleanslate
I've not use it in production yet, but it apparently came out of the development of the BBC World Service widget.
Yes, your css should override anything declared outside the widget, but your reset must be quite comprehensive. I suggest using a modified version of http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/05/01/reset-reloaded/, but you'll have to modify all the selectors yourself.
I would be tempted to strengthen your selectors also, so rather than
#widget tagname{}
Use
html body #widget tagname{}
Your selectors will now have a much higher weight.
Use namespace & reset & LESS
#my-ns {
#import ".../reset.less";
... your other styles ...
}
I use Eric Meyer's reset reloaded to reset CSS styles.
Link:
http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/05/01/reset-reloaded/

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