Why Does My Child Selector Fail to Style Table Cells?

Child Selector vs. Descendant Selector in Table Structures

When selecting elements in HTML documents, developers often use child selectors (>) to target direct children and descendant selectors to target any nested element. However, there are scenarios where the child selector seems to fail unexpectedly.

Consider the following example:

table tr td {
  background-color: red;
}

table > tr > td {
  background-color: blue;
}

The first rule successfully selects all

elements within elements within elements. However, the second rule, which uses the child selector (>), fails to style any , which in turn is a child of

elements. Puzzled by this behavior, developers might assume that since	is a child of

, the child selector should apply.

The confusion arises from the implicit inclusion of a

element in HTML. By default, browsers insert a element to contain elements. As a result, the actual element structure becomes:

In this modified structure,

is no longer a direct child of , but rather a child of , which itself is a child of . Therefore, the > selector cannot target .

To correct this issue, developers must select the tbody element explicitly:

table > tbody > tr > td {
  background-color: blue;
}

This ensures that the child selector targets the correct element in the modified structure. Additionally, if a tbody element is explicitly added to the HTML document, the same selector can be used.

since it is not an immediate child of

The above is the detailed content of Why Does My Child Selector Fail to Style Table Cells?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!