"Inheriting" from a less-specific selector

CSS1 has the problem that while inheritance was the effective initial value
for many properties, there was no way for style sheet authors to specify it.
So once it had been overridden, there was no way to reclaim the inheritance
behavior lower in the cascade. CSS2, fortunately, fixed this.

But CSS2 has almost exactly the same problem elsewhere!

With the pseudo-classes ":active", ":hover", and ":focus", CSS2 introduces
the notion that, by "default", these pseudo-classes inherit their property
values from the next-least-specific selector for an element. But as with the
"inherit" problem in CSS1, there appears to be no way to recapture this
behavior once it has been overridden in the cascade.

For the "cascade" concept to work where the state of the cascade is not
known in advance, it is imperitive that style sheet authors always be able
to restore the cascade to a defined state.

Braden

Received on Thursday, 26 August 1999 07:15:52 UTC