Skip to main content

CSS inheritance sequence

    Starting today, I will also write about a few things CSS apart from Google Maps Javascript API and Jquery Mobile. I will cover some really interesting things in CSS and keep updating this blog as and when I learn something new and think its worth sharing with you all.

    Today we will look at a very common mostly known thing in CSS - the inheritance sequence of CSS. Most of you reading this post must be aware that there are 3 ways in which you can include CSS into your web application.

  • External Stylesheet
  • Internal Stylesheet
  • Inline Styles

External Style Sheet
    An external style sheet is ideal when you are writing a style that would be applied across multiple pages. The external style sheet gives the developer lot of control over the look and feel of the entire website or web application. The external style sheet is included using the the "link" tag which is included in the head section.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles/default.css" />

Internal Style Sheet
    An internal style sheet is used usually when a single document has unique style. The internal styles are written as part of the "style" tag which is again included in the "head" section.

<style>
    p{
        font-size: 20px;
        color: #a123bb;
    }
</style>

Inline Style
    An inline style loses many of the advantages of style sheets by mixing the content with the presentation. Inline styles should generally be avoided and be used when absolutely necessary and unavoidable!

<p style="font-size: 20px; color: #a123bb;"></p>

    As we know and/or have learned from experience, that these styles cascade into one, let's say a "virtual" style sheet which gets applied on the entire web site/application. This cascade follows the following sequence to override each other and create one final style sheet. Number #4 in the following list has the highest priority in the cascade.
  1. Browser default styles
  2. External style sheet
  3. Internal style sheet
  4. Inline styles
    So an inline styles has the highest priority, meaning that it will override a style defined inside the "head" tag, or in an external style sheet or the default browser styles. However, there are a few cases where this sequence of cascade can change!

Case #1: Usage of the !important keyword
    In case there is the "!important" keyword associated with an of the styles, then that style would get applied irrespective of whether it is part of the internal or the external style sheet.

Case #2: Javascript
    When styles are applied through javascript, these styles will override all styles included as part of the internal or external style sheet or even the inline styles.

Case #3: Sequence of inclusion of stylesheets
    If the link to the external style sheet is placed after the internal style sheet in the "head" tag, the external style sheet will override the internal stye sheet!

    Hope you have enjoyed this post and learned a few new things. Do let me know in case you want me to include a topic as part of the blog and I would be happy to write about it! Till then keep reading and keep sharing.

Comments

Recommended for You

ES6 101 - Map

Spatial Unlimited changes to The UI Dev After being hosted on blogger 😣 for the last 6 years 📆, this page has finally been moved to Github.io This means a few things for you, dear reader! You will be redirected to the new page shortly! ⏩ ⏩ ⏩ Once crapy HTML is now better looking Markdown ! 😍 😍 The entire blog is a Github repo ! 😍 😍 Spatial Unlimited is now The UI Dev 😍 😍

Jquery Mobile Form - Slider control

    Input field of type range is newly introduced in HTML5 and is very well styled. The style is further enhanced when using the Jquery Mobile framework and we will see how this can be done in today's post. Jquery Mobile styles the range input type with capsule-corners and adds a circular handle to the slider.   The input's value is used to configure the starting position of the handle and the value is populated in the text input. Specify the min and max attribute values to set the slider's range. If you want to constrain input to specific increments, add the step attribute.   As you drag the slider's handle, the framework will update the native input's value (and vice-versa) so they are always in sync; this ensures that the value is submitted with the form.     The range input elements are available in 2 flavors/sizes - regular and mini. Adding a data attribute data-mini="true" to the input tag renders a smaller sized input el...

Form info window

         Today we will look at a Google Maps API v3 example to add a form in the information bubble! This is usually required when we wish to accept some data/information from the user! This data can be saved to a server in the form of an XML file or a database! The information can then be retrieved back at a later stage, when necessary!          In this example we will only look at form in the information bubble! The connectivity part with the server will be discussed in another post! So, today's code snippet is as seen below! <html> <head> <title> Google Maps API v3 - Adding marker and info window on Click and creating a form in the infowindow with the lat-lng information in it. </title> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://maps.google.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var map;    //When using ev...

Difference between word-break: break-all versus word-wrap: break-word

    The 2 CSS properties  word-break: break-all  and  word-wrap: break-word  appear to work in the same way or generate the same output, but there is a slight difference between the 2 and we will be discussing these differences today.     Take a look at the example above. The difference is quite evident, however I will try to explain it further. word-break: break-all Irrespective of whether it’s a continuous word or many words, break-all breaks them up at the edge of the width limit even within the characters of the same word word-wrap: break-word This will wrap long words onto the next line. break-word adjusts different words so that they do not break in the middle.     So if you have many fixed-size spans which get content dynamically, you might just prefer using  word-wrap: break-word , as that way only the continuous words are broken in between, and in case it’s a sentence comprising many words, the spa...

Reverse Geocoding

    The term geocoding generally refers to translating a human-readable address into a location on the map. The process of doing the converse, translating a location on the map into a human-readable address, is known as reverse geocoding. You can read more about geocoding here .     The Geocoder in Google Maps API v3, supports reverse geocoding directly. While geocoding, we supply a textual address and that gets mapped as a location on the map. However, in reverse geocoding, instead of supplying the textual address, we will supply a comma- separated latitude- longitude pair and get a textual address as the result. You can have a look at the geocoding example here , before proceeding to the reverse geocoding example.     The reverse geocoder often returns more than one result. Geocoding "addresses" are not just postal addresses, but any way to geographically name a location. For example, when geocoding a point in the city of Agra, India,...