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HomeWeb Front-endCSS TutorialWhy is my nth-child selector not working on nested elements?

 Why is my nth-child selector not working on nested elements?

Why is nth-child Selector Not Working?

You may have encountered this issue while using the nth-child selector for styling purposes. Despite using this selector to add background images to different social icons, you notice that all icons display the same appearance. This signifies that something is amiss in your code.

Delving into the Issue

The nth-child selector is designed to target specific elements based on their position among sibling elements. However, in your code, the selector:

#social-links div:nth-child(1),
#social-links div:nth-child(2),
#social-links div:nth-child(3),
#social-links div:nth-child(4),

targets the div elements that are children of the #social-links element. However, these div elements are always the sole child of their respective anchor (a) elements. Therefore, the nth-child selector cannot distinguish between them since they are all the first and only child of their anchor elements.

The Correct Approach

To rectify this issue, you need to adjust the nth-child selector to target the anchor elements instead of the div elements. By doing so, you can specify which anchor element should receive a particular background image:

#social-links a:nth-child(1) div { 
   background-image: url('path/to/image1.svg'); 
}
#social-links a:nth-child(2) div { 
   background-image: url('path/to/image2.svg'); 
}
#social-links a:nth-child(3) div { 
   background-image: url('path/to/image3.svg'); 
}
#social-links a:nth-child(4) div { 
   background-image: url('path/to/image4.svg'); 
}

This modified code structure ensures that each anchor element receives the intended background image based on its position among the sibling anchor elements.

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