CSS Classes: Selectors, Styling, Tips, Tricks & More

Why are CSS Classes a Big Deal?

• Reusability: Write your styles once and apply them wherever and whenever you need them. This saves a ton of time and effort.
• Maintainability: Do you need to change the appearance of all your buttons? Just update the styles associated with your “button” class, and the changes instantly cascade throughout your site.
• Organization: Classes help you keep your CSS code clean and structured, making it much easier to understand and manage as your website grows.

The Elementor Connection

Elementor, a leading WordPress website builder, embraces CSS classes to their fullest potential. It provides an intuitive interface for creating and applying classes, streamlining the process of styling your website. With Elementor’s visual builder, you can see your changes in real time, making design customization both efficient and enjoyable. Let’s Get Started!

Whether you’re a seasoned web developer or just starting with web design, understanding CSS classes is a game-changer. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll dive deep into the world of classes, exploring everything from their basics to advanced techniques, all geared towards helping you create stunning websites.

Fundamentals of CSS Classes

What is a CSS Class?

Let’s break down the fundamentals. A CSS class is an identifier that allows you to associate specific style rules with a group of HTML elements. Here’s the basic structure:

1. Class Name: You create a class name that is typically descriptive of the styles it will hold (e.g., “highlight-text” or “main-button”). Class names always start with a period (.).
2. CSS Declaration Block: Within curly brackets {}, you define all the styling properties and their values that you want to apply to elements with that class. 
3. Applying to HTML: You add the class attribute to your HTML elements and assign it the name of your class.

Creating CSS Classes

While Elementor offers a fantastic visual interface to style elements and often automatically generates classes for you, it’s helpful to understand the basics of how CSS classes are written. Here’s the process:

1. Your CSS Stylesheet: CSS classes are defined within a separate file called a stylesheet, usually with a “.css” extension (e.g., “style.css”). Your HTML document will link to this file to pull in the styles.
2. Start with a Period: Every CSS class name must begin with a period (.). This is how the browser knows it’s dealing with a class and not a regular HTML element.
3. Choose a Descriptive Name: Select a name that clearly reflects the purpose of the styles you’ll be defining within that class. Using lowercase letters is standard, and if you need multiple words, separate them with hyphens (e.g., “error-message”, “product-title”).
4. The Curly Brackets: Use curly brackets {} to enclose the styling properties and values you want to associate with the class.
5. Inside the Brackets: List each CSS property name followed by a colon (:) and then the value you want to assign to that property. Separate each property-value pair with a semicolon (;)

Best Practices for Class Names:

• Meaningful: Make your names descriptive so they’re easy to understand and remember.
• Avoid overly generic names: Names like “big” or “red” are too vague. Be more specific (e.g., “intro-paragraph” or “error-message”).
• Consistency: Use a consistent naming convention (like hyphens or camelCase) across your project.

Applying Classes to HTML Elements

Here’s where the magic of CSS classes truly happens. To apply the styles you’ve defined in a class to a specific element on your web page, you’ll use the class attribute within your HTML tags.

1. Locate Your HTML Element: Find the HTML tag that represents the content you want to style (e.g., a paragraph <p>, a heading <h1>, an image <img>, etc.).
2. Add the class Attribute: Within the opening tag of your chosen element, include the class attribute.
3. Assign Your Class Name: Set the value of the class attribute to the name of the CSS class you created. When applying the class to your HTML, be sure to omit the period (.).

Key Points:

• Multiple Classes: A single HTML element can belong to multiple classes. Simply separate the class names with spaces within the class attribute (e.g., <h2 class=”primary-heading subtitle”>).
• Order Matters (Sometimes): In most cases, the order of classes within the class attribute doesn’t affect the styling. However, if there are conflicting styles, the class listed last will take precedence due to a concept called “specificity,” which we’ll cover in more detail later.

Benefits of Using CSS Classes

Why are CSS classes such a fundamental tool for web design? Here are the key advantages:

• Reusability: Classes’ core strength lies in their reusability. Define a set of styles once within a class and then apply them effortlessly to any number of elements across your entire website. This saves a significant amount of time and keeps your code cleaner.
• Maintainability: Imagine needing to change the font color for all your website’s buttons. With classes, you simply update the styles within your “button” class, and the change automatically propagates to every single button on your site. This makes updates and large-scale modifications incredibly efficient.
• Organization: Classes help impose a logical structure on your CSS code. By grouping related styles under descriptive class names, your stylesheet becomes far easier to read, navigate, and manage as your website grows more complex.
• Separation of Concerns: One of the foundational principles of good web development is maintaining a clear separation between your website’s content (HTML) and its presentation (CSS). Classes reinforce this separation, making your code cleaner and your workflow more organized.

Example:

You want to style all product descriptions on your website with a specific font, gray color, and some margin for spacing. Using a CSS class, you can:

1. Create a class: Define a class named something like “product-description” with the desired styles.
2. Apply to any product description: Add the “product-description” class to every paragraph (<p>) that contains a product description on your site.

Now, all your product descriptions will automatically have the consistent style you defined, and any future changes only require an update in one place – the “.product-description” class!

Harnessing the Power of Specificity and Inheritance

Understanding Specificity

Imagine several personal trainers giving you instructions on how to exercise, each offering slightly different advice. How do you determine who to listen to? Specificity in CSS acts much like a ranking system, helping the browser decide which styling rules take precedence when conflicts arise.

Here’s a simplified way to think about the ranking of CSS specificity:

1. Inline Styles (Most Specific): Styles defined directly within an HTML element’s style attribute override almost everything else. However, using inline styles is generally discouraged, as it goes against the separation of HTML structure and CSS styling.
2. IDs: A unique ID selector (e.g., “#main-header”) holds a lot of weight in specificity.
3. Classes, Attributes, and Pseudo-classes: These selectors generally carry equal weight. However, combining them can increase specificity (e.g., a class selector along with a pseudo-class targeting a specific state like .highlight:hover).
4. Elements and Pseudo-elements: Simple selectors targeting HTML elements (like “p” or “div”) are the least specific.

Inheritance

Think of inheritance as traits being passed down within a family. In CSS, certain styles can “inherit” their values from their parent elements. This means that if you set a style on a parent container, its child elements will often automatically take on that same style unless specifically overridden.

Which Properties Inherit?

Not all CSS properties are inheritable. Some common examples of properties that DO inherit:

• Text/Font: Font properties like font family, font-size, color, etc.
• Spacing: Sometimes, properties like margins and padding may be inherited depending on context.
• List styles: Properties related to list presentation (e.g., list-style-type)

Which Properties Don’t Inherit?

Many layout-related properties generally do NOT inherit:

• Backgrounds & Borders: Properties like background color, border, etc.
• Dimensions: Width, height, position

Controlling Inheritance

There are specific keywords you can use to force inheritance behavior if needed:

• inherit: Forces a property to take on the value of its parent element.
• initial: Resets a property to its browser default value.

Understanding the Cascade

The “cascade” in Cascading Style Sheets refers to the way browsers determine the final style applying to a specific element. It considers the following in order:

1. Specificity: We covered how specific selectors take precedence.
2. Source Order: If equally specific rules exist, the one that comes later in your stylesheet (or further down within an HTML document for inline styles) will win. 3. Inheritance: If a specific style isn’t explicitly set for an element, inheritance plays a role in determining the final value.

Styling Techniques with CSS Classes

Targeting Specific Elements within Classes

The ability to pinpoint specific elements nested within a broader class is where flexibility meets control in your CSS styling. Here’s a breakdown of the most common techniques:

Descendant Selectors: The most basic way to target a nested element. You simply combine the class name with the name of the nested tag you want to style. For example, to style all the links inside elements with the class “callout-box”:

Child Selectors For more precision, child selectors (indicated with a > symbol) target only the direct children of an element. For example, you might want to style only the first-level list items within your “product list” class.

Combinators: You can get even more granular with other combinators:

• Adjacent Sibling Selector (+): Targets an element that directly follows another element.
• General Sibling Selector (~): This selector targets elements that follow another element as long as they share the same parent.

Practical Example

Imagine you have a “sidebar” class used for various content sidebars on your website. You might want to differentiate links in different sidebars:

• .sidebar a – Styles all links within any sidebar
• .sidebar > p – Styles only paragraphs directly nested within sidebars
• .navigation-sidebar a – Styles links specifically within sidebars that also have the “navigation-sidebar” class.

Styling Techniques with CSS Classes

Pseudo-classes: Dynamic Styling Based on State

Pseudo-classes allow you to select elements not only by their name but also by their current state, position within the document, or even user interactions. They always begin with a colon (:) and are attached to a regular class or element selector.

Commonly Used Pseudo-classes

• Hover State (hover) Triggers styles when the user moves over an element. Perfect for highlighting links and buttons or revealing additional information on hover.

   

• Active State (active) Applies styles when an element is being clicked or activated.
• Focus State (focus) Styles elements that have keyboard focus (useful for accessibility and form usability).
• Positional Pseudo-classes Target elements based on their position within their parent:

   

  • first-child
  • last-child
  • nth-child(): Allows selection based on more complex patterns (even, odd, or specific numbers)
• And many more! There are too many to cover here, but examples include:visited for styling visited links, : checked for checkboxes, and :disabled for form elements that are disabled.

Important Note: The order of pseudo-classes matters, often following a pattern known as “LVFHA” (Link, Visited, Focus, Hover, Active) to ensure styles follow the expected sequence when a link changes state.

Pseudo-elements: Adding Style & Content Beyond Your HTML

Pseudo-elements give you the power to style specific parts of an element or even insert generated content that isn’t explicitly present in your HTML structure. They act like virtual child elements that you can manipulate with CSS. Pseudo-elements are denoted by double colons (::)

The Most Popular Pseudo-elements

• ::before: Allows you to insert content before the selected element’s actual content. Often used for decorative effects, icons, or additional labeling.
• ::after: Similar to ::before but inserts content after the element’s content.

   

• ::first-letter: This option targets the first letter of a block of text, letting you apply special styling for drop caps or other typographic effects.
• ::first-line: This lets you style the first line of a text block. It is commonly used to change font size, color, or weight.

Key Points

• Content Property: For ::before and ::after, the content property is essential to define what will actually be inserted. It can be empty, text, or even special characters using Unicode.
• Not All Elements Support Them: Some elements may have limitations on which pseudo-elements work with them.

Common CSS Properties Used with Classes

CSS properties form the heart of your styling toolbox. Let’s break down some of the most essential ones you’ll find yourself using again and again:

Appearance and Text

• background-color: Sets the background color of an element.
• color: Controls the color of your text.
• font-family: Specifies the font to use (choose from generic families like sans-serif or serif, or specify specific fonts).
• font-size: Determines the size of your text (using units like pixels (px) or ems (em)).
• font-weight: Controls how bold or light your text appears (normal, bold, or numerical values like 400, 700).
• text-align: Aligns text within an element (left, right, center, justify).
• text-decoration: Adds underlines, overlines, or strikethroughs to text.

Spacing and Layout

• margin: Creates space around the outside of an element, pushing other elements away.
• padding Creates space within an element between its content and its border.
• width and height: Set fixed dimensions for elements. Note that elements often have additional sizing behavior based on content and the box model, which is a whole other topic!
• display: This controls fundamental layout behavior:
  • block: Element takes up available horizontal space.
  • inline: Element sits within a line of text.
  • inline-block: A hybrid with both block and inline aspects.
  • (There are Also many options specifically for layout, like flex (flexbox) and grid (CSS Grid), which we’ll cover later!)

Elementor Integration: The Power of Visual Styling

Elementor understands that while the concepts behind CSS classes are incredibly powerful, only some are code wizards. Its strength lies in providing an intuitive, visual way to harness that same power. Here’s how it integrates with CSS classes:

• Automatic Class Generation: Often, Elementor automatically creates logical CSS classes behind the scenes as you style elements through its interface. You can further customize these for the organization or to target them independently.
• Visual Controls: Rather than writing CSS rules by hand, Elementor provides a wide range of visual controls. When you adjust colors, fonts, spacing, etc., Elementor cleverly translates those choices into corresponding CSS styles associated with the appropriate classes.
• Advanced Tab: With every Elementor element, you’ll find an “Advanced” tab. This offers options to:
  • Add your own custom CSS classes directly to that element
  • Write custom CSS rules that target any classes associated with that element. This gives you full control over advanced customizations!

Benefits of this Approach

• Speed: Styling visually with Elementor is significantly faster than writing CSS from scratch.
• Accessibility: It opens the world of web design to individuals who may not be as comfortable with coding.
• Organization: Elementor’s class management helps keep your CSS well-structured.
• Learning Tool: Elementor can be a fantastic way to learn about CSS classes. You can inspect the styles it generates and gradually start adding your own custom CSS alongside it.

Advanced Concepts with CSS Classes

Layout and Structure with CSS Classes

In the world of web design, layout is king! CSS classes, combined with powerful layout techniques, give you the tools to shape the structure of your web pages. Let’s focus on two essential methods:

1. Grid Systems: CSS grids provide a flexible way to divide your page into rows and columns. By assigning classes to elements, you dictate which grid areas they occupy, easily creating complex multi-column layouts.
2. Flexbox: Flexbox excels at aligning and distributing items within a container. It’s perfect for smaller-scale layout components like navigation menus, hero sections, or content blocks. Using CSS classes with Flexbox lets you fine-tune the spacing and sizing of items within these sections.

Common Use Cases with Classes:

• Header: Create classes to target and style your site header’s logo, navigation list, and any other header elements.
• Content Blocks: Design classes for self-contained blocks of content (e.g., “feature-box,” “testimonial-card,” “pricing-table”), allowing you to reuse consistent visual styling throughout your site.
• Footers: Just like the header, break down your footer into logical components with classes for styling.

Pro Tip: Often, established CSS frameworks (like Bootstrap) provide pre-built grid and component classes that help kickstart your layouts. This can save development time but can also involve learning the specific class naming conventions of that framework.

Responsive Design: Adapting to Different Screens

In today’s world of smartphones, tablets, laptops, and large desktop monitors, more than one-size-fits-all design approach will be needed. Responsive design ensures your website adapts gracefully to different screen sizes, and CSS classes play a crucial role in making it happen.

Media Queries: The Key to Responsiveness

Media queries let you write CSS rules that apply only when certain conditions are met, mainly screen size. Here’s a simplified outline of how they work with classes:

1. Breakpoints: Determine the screen widths where you want your layout to adjust. Typical breakpoints are based on common device sizes (tablets, smartphones, etc.).
2. Media Query: You write a media query with a condition, like: