Why Use the “>” Symbol in CSS

In this article, we’ll explain why we use the “>” symbol in CSS. The “>” symbol in CSS is called a child selector and is used to select the direct children of an element.

Child Selectors

Child selectors are a very useful tool in CSS that can select the direct children of an element. In CSS, when we use the “>” symbol, it means that only the direct children are selected, not the children of the children of the children.

For example, if we have the following HTML code:

<div class="parent">
<div class="child">Child 1</div>
<div class="child">Child 2</div>
<div class="child">Child 3</div>
</div>

We can use the child selector to select the direct child element .child of .parent as follows:

.parent > .child {
color: blue;
}

This CSS code will set the text color of the direct child element .child of .parent to blue.

Child Selectors vs. Descendant Selectors

Before understanding why we use the “>” (“child” or “descendant”) selector, we need to first understand the difference between child and descendant selectors.

A descendant selector is a selector separated by a space. It is used to select all descendants of an element, including children, children of children, and even further descendants.

For example, if we have the following HTML code:

<div class="parent"> 
<div class="child"> 
<div class="grandchild">Grandchild 1</div> 
<div class="grandchild">Grandchild 2</div> 
</div> 
<div class="child"> 
<div class="grandchild">Grandchild 3</div> 
<div class="grandchild">Grandchild 4</div> 
</div> 
</div> 

We can use the descendant selector to select all .grandchild elements within .parent as follows:

.parent .grandchild {
color: red;
}

This CSS code will set the text color of all .grandchild elements within .parent to red.

Compared to descendant selectors, child selectors only target immediate child elements. Therefore, using child selectors allows you to more precisely target the elements you want to style.

Example Description

Let’s look at an example using child selectors.

Suppose we have a navigation menu list, its HTML and CSS code are as follows:

<ul class="nav"> 
<li class="item">Home</li> 
<li class="item">About</li> 
<li class="item">Services</li> 
<li class="item">Contact</li> 
</ul> 

.nav > .item { 
padding: 10px; 
background-color: lightblue; 
border: 1px solid blue; 
}

The above CSS code will set the padding of the .item element, a direct child of .nav, to 10 pixels, a light blue background, and a 1-pixel solid blue border.

This will only style the first-level list items (direct children) of the navigation menu, without affecting descendant elements like the second- and third-level list items.

Summary

In this article, we introduced the reasons and usage of the “>” character in CSS. Child selectors can select direct children of an element. Unlike descendant selectors, they allow for more precise selection of elements to style. By using child selectors, we can easily control the scope of style application, making CSS writing more flexible and efficient. I hope this article is helpful!