Addressing space outside a document's root element

I noticed that - for HTML document - rules applied to the <body> element are 
not applied to space below the lowest flow or block element inside the 
<body> element.

This is quite notable for the "cursor" property when applied to <body>.

Of course, there are several workarounds available to cope with this 
problem. One of them is to assign those properties to "*". Another is to set 
the "height" property of the <body> element.

Is this a peculiarity to HTML and the <body> element? Because if it isn't I 
would prefer if CSS provided a declarative way (hence, a selector) to 
address space outside the root element.

Regards,
Axel Dahmen

Received on Monday, 13 May 2013 13:48:18 UTC