It's always funny when people say to me, "I hate CSS." Sometimes I ask why, but most of the time I just move on disgusted. CSS is fun and I love learning more and more and more about it. I think one of the reasons people don't CSS is because there is so much too it, and so much nuance. It's similar to the english language: there, they're, their.

One example of that nuance is Attribute Selectors. While pretty much everyone know you and use classes .item, ids #logo, and tags div, not everyone knows there are other ways to select elements. Attribute selectors allow you to select an item if it has a certain attribute or that that attribute has a certain value. Attribute selectors can give you a special treatment if a linke has target="_blank" to let a user know they are leaving your site. They can change a style if the file name you're linking to ends in .pdf.

Attribute selectors are very powerful, and I often forget about them So here are the things I've learned and found in different places, put together, and referenced so I'd have a simple place to come back to. Because really this "blog" is for me anyways.

Eight different types of CSS attribute selectors

/* This attribute exists on the element */
[value] { }

/* This attribute has a specific value of cool */
[value='cool'] { }

/* This attribute value contains the word cool somewhere in it */
[value*='cool'] { }

/* This attribute value contains the word cool in a space-separated list */
[value~='cool'] { }

/* This attribute value starts with the word cool */
[value^='cool'] { }

/* This attribute value starts with cool in a dash-separated list */
[value|='cool'] { }

/* This attribute value ends with the word cool */
[value$='cool'] { }

/* This does not have an attribute with the value of cool */
:not([value='cool']) { }

The above code is sniped from Emma Bostian's gist.

Multiple Selectors

One thing to note is that these attribute selectors can be chained to be more specific or require more matches.

/* This attribute has a specific value of cool and a name of david */
[value='cool'][name='david'] { }

Case-Insensitve Attribute Selectors

By default, the strings inside attribute selectors are case sensitive. Simply adding i to the end of the attribute selector will allow you to select the strings regardless of case. That seems super helpful in a large group project.

/* Will match
<div data-state="open"></div>
<div data-state="Open"></div>
<div data-state="OPEN"></div>
<div data-state="oPeN"></div>
*/
[data-state="open" i] { }

The above code is sniped from CSS Tricks.

Specificity (spec·i·fic·i·ty)

Arrtibute selectors are the same weight in specificity as a class. The way I like to think about it is 100 points for ids, 10 points for classes, and 1 point for tags. So for example: #page a.link[href$='.pdf'] would be work 121 points. 100 for the #page, 10 for the .link, 10 for [href$='.pdf'], and 1 for a.

And there you have it, Attribute Selectors. They are are super powerful and super under utilized. I'm hoping to use them more in my work.

Words