CSS Wildcards
CSS wildcard
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Syntax
The syntax for wildcards is very simple; just use a single asterisk in your stylesheet:
* {
/* CSS styles */
}
Example
Suppose we have an HTML document containing several div and p elements. We want to set a uniform font size and color for all elements and remove the default margins and padding.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<title>CSS Wildcard Example</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">
</head>
<body>
<div>This is a div element.</div>
<p>This is a paragraph element.</p>
</body>
</html>
Now let’s create a styles.css file and use wildcards to style all elements:
* {
font-size: 16px;
color: #333;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
In the example above, the wildcard selector is applied to all elements, setting the font size to 16 pixels, the color to #333 (light gray), and removing all margins and padding.
Notes
While wildcard selectors can be convenient for uniformly styling all elements, they should be used with caution in real-world development. Excessive use of wildcards can lead to style resets and overwriting issues, increasing page rendering time and decreasing performance.
Furthermore, wildcard selectors have a low specificity and can be easily overwritten by other selectors. If you need to style specific elements, it’s best to use more specific selectors to ensure that the styles are applied correctly.
In general, wildcard selectors can simplify stylesheet writing in some cases, but excessive use should be avoided in real-world projects to ensure page performance and maintainability.