Some days I swear I\'m going mad. This is one of those days. I thought my CSS was fairly straight-forward here, but it just doesn\'t seem to be working. What am I missing?
My CSS looks like this:
ul > li {
text-decoration: none;
}
ul > li.u {
text-decoration: underline;
}
ul > li > ul > li {
text-decoration: none;
}
ul > li > ul > li.u {
text-decoration: underline;
}
And my HTML looks like this:
<ul>
<li>Should not be underlined</li>
<li class=\"u\">Should be underlined
<ul>
<li>Should not be underlined</li>
<li class=\"u\">Should be underlined</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
Yet it comes up like this:
text-decoration
does not behave the same as other font/text related styling like font-weight
. Applying text-decoration
will affect all nested elements as well.
Check this out:
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/text.html#propdef-text-decoration
Excerpt:
Text decorations on inline boxes are
drawn across the entire element, going
across any descendant elements without
paying any attention to their
presence. The \'text-decoration\'
property on descendant elements cannot
have any effect on the decoration of
the element
. . . .
Some user agents
have implemented text-decoration by
propagating the decoration to the
descendant elements as opposed to
simply drawing the decoration through
the elements as described above. This
was arguably allowed by the looser
wording in CSS2.
I\'ve got the info from: http://csscreator.com/node/14951
You get rid of text-decoration
applied to a parent element in those cases:
Out-of-flow elements, such as floated and absolutely positioned ones
li {
float: left; /* Avoid text-decoration propagation from ul */
clear: both; /* One li per line */
}
ul { overflow: hidden; } /* Clearfix */
ul {
overflow: hidden; /* Clearfix */
}
li {
float: left; /* Avoid text-decoration propagation from ul */
clear: both; /* One li per line */
}
li.u {
text-decoration: underline;
}
<ul>
<li>Should not be underlined</li>
<li class=\"u\">Should be underlined
<ul>
<li>Should not be underlined</li>
<li class=\"u\">Should be underlined</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
Atomic inline-level elements, such as inline blocks and inline tables
But if you use li{display:inline-block}
, then you don\'t have bullets (you lose display:list-item
) and the items appear one next to the others.
Then, to have one item per line, you can use
li {
display: inline-block; /* Avoid text-decoration propagation from ul */
width: 100%; /* One li per line */
}
And to add the bullets, you can use ::before
pseudo-elements. However, bullets shouldn\'t be underlined, so you will need to take them out-of-flow or make them atomic inline-level too.
li {
display: inline-block; /* Avoid text-decoration propagation from ul */
width: 100%; /* One li per line */
}
li:before {
content: \'• \'; /* Insert bullet */
display: inline-block; /* Avoid text-decoration propagation from li */
white-space: pre-wrap; /* Don\'t collapse the whitespace */
}
li.u {
text-decoration: underline;
}
<ul>
<li>Should not be underlined</li>
<li class=\"u\">Should be underlined
<ul>
<li>Should not be underlined</li>
<li class=\"u\">Should be underlined</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
li {
display: inline-block; /* Avoid text-decoration propagation from ul */
width: 100%; /* One li per line */
}
li:before {
content: \'•\'; /* Insert bullet */
position: absolute; /* Avoid text-decoration propagation from li */
margin-left: -.75em;
}
li.u {
text-decoration: underline;
}
<ul>
<li>Should not be underlined</li>
<li class=\"u\">Should be underlined
<ul>
<li>Should not be underlined</li>
<li class=\"u\">Should be underlined</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
This behavior is specified in CSS 2.1 and CSS Text Decoration Module Level 3:
Note that text decorations are not propagated to any out-of-flow
descendants, nor to the contents of atomic inline-level descendants
such as inline blocks and inline tables.
o.k.w.\'s answer above explains perfectly why you can\'t do what you are asking without some other changes. No, you\'re not going mad!
Possible workarounds:
- try
border-bottom
?
- wrap the text you want underlined in a
span class=\"u\"
tag? (to prevent the text-decoration from decorating nested elements)
- if you aren\'t able to change the markup, you could add some scripting to accomplish the same as my previous suggestion.
Best of luck!
The reason you´re seeing what you\'re seeing is that your rule
ul > li.u
takes preference over:
ul > li > ul > li
as a class is specified and that has more weight than the element selectors together.
Edit: What you could try is:
.u ul {
text-decoration: none;
}
.u {
text-decoration: underline;
}
and play around with that (perhaps you will have to use li.u instead of just .u).
However, depending on the content you might want to wrap the underlined parts in q, em or strong tags and style these tags instead of using a class. That way you would be describing your content as well as styling it.
.u {text-decoration: underline;}