CSS inheritance and specificity

Question

I'm having trouble with a css stylesheet. I've narrowed it down to be about inheritance and specificity in the css styles.

Right now (simplified) I've got an HTML <body> that looks like the following:

<div id="page-wrap">
    <div class="unilogin-wrap">
        <h1 class="unilogin-h1">Hello world!</h1>
    </div>
</div>

Now, this is part of a uni-login form that needs to be used on several websites and therefore it has a seperate stylesheet for the specific unilogin style. However in the website stylesheet (style.css) the following is set:

#page-wrap h1{
    font-size:18px;
    margin-bottom: 18px;
    margin-left:15px;
}

And in the unilogin stylesheet (unilogin.css) the following is set:

.unilogin-wrap h1.unilogin-h1 {
    padding:0;
    margin:0;
    font-size:18px;
    color:#596168;
    text-shadow: 1px 1px 0px #fff;
}

However this won't override the inherited h1 style from style.css. If I put #page-wrap h1.unilogin-h1{} instead it works just fine. This is not an option though because it has to work on several websites all with different stylesheets that I can't just change.

Is the any way to override the specificity of the inherited h1 style in the second stylesheet without using inline html styling? (I know that the style="" html attribute has higher specificity, but I prefer to keep the styles in a stylesheet).

Thanks...

In unilogin.css did you mean to use #unilogin-wrap? Because in your HTML it's an id not a class. — James Allardice
– James Allardice, Commented Jul 10, 2011 at 11:45

atlau · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-10 11:54:19Z

1

try changing .unilogin-wrap h1.unilogin-h1 {

to

#unilogin-wrap h1.unilogin-h1 {

since .unilogin-wrap acts on <whatever class="unilogin-wrap" and #unilogin-wrap on <whatever id="unilogin-wrap"

answered Jul 10, 2011 at 11:54

atlau

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Inca · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-10 11:48:30Z

0

The more structural solution: giving #page-wrap a class also

<div id='page-wrap' class='page_wrap'>

and then refer to the class when setting general styles. (Using the id only for absolute positioning and individual hiding / showing)

Other approach is using !important

 margin:0 !important;

Obviously, if you rely on this much it gets easily polluted and a nightmare to maintain, but for special cases it may be what you need.

answered Jul 10, 2011 at 11:48

Inca

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