When viewing the code below in my browser the background is white. The universal selector *
has the lowest specificity, and the body
selector comes after the universal selector. Shouldn't it be grey?
* {
background-color: white;
}
body {
background-color: grey;
}
Let's break down the code in the question:
* {
background-color: white;
}
body {
background-color: grey;
}
This is saying:
- Select every element and make its background color white.
- Select the
body
element and make its background color grey.
Well, if the universal selector says select all elements, this would include the root element (html
).
So the code computes to:
html {
background-color: white;
}
body {
background-color: grey;
}
The root element paints the canvas white, and the body
element has no height, so the canvas remains white.
Add some content to your page or specify a height for body
and you'll see gray.
Observation made in the comments:
Interesting. But if we eliminate the *
from the equation and just have the body
, the page will be grey with or without height
being specified. I don't quite understand why that is.
So if we eliminate the universal selector, what happens to the background-color
of the root element?
It resets to its initial value: transparent
(see: 3.2. the background-color
property)
And when the background-color
of the html
element is transparent
, the browser uses the background-color
of the body
element to paint the canvas.
3.11.2. The Canvas Background and the HTML <body>
Element
For documents whose root element is an HTML HTML
element or an XHTML
html
element: if the computed value of background-image
on the
root element is none
and its background-color
is transparent
,
user agents must instead propagate the computed values of the
background properties from that element's first HTML BODY
or XHTML
body
child element. The used values of that BODY
element's
background properties are their initial values, and the propagated
values are treated as if they were specified on the root element. It
is recommended that authors of HTML documents specify the canvas
background for the BODY
element rather than the HTML
element.
Your body
element is probably empty (or contains only other elements, but not direct text).
Add some text to the body
. You’ll see that its background will be grey.
Your * {background-color: white;}
gives the html
element and any other element (except body
) a white background. So if your body
contains only a div
element, this div
will have a white background, and you won’t see the grey body
background because the div
fills it out completely. If you give the body
some padding
, you’ll see the background color.
* {
background-color: white;
}
body {
background-color: grey;
padding:1%;
}
I think the body's background does change, but due to the children inside the body being affected by the *
selector, you can't actually see it. The *
also selects the children of the body, and sets the background of those elements, covering the body's background up.
* { background-color: white }
body { background-color: grey }
<p>Text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text</p>
Same snippet with the <p>
positioned relatively to reveal the body's background-color
:
* { background-color: white }
body { background-color: grey }
p {
position: relative;
top: 50px;
}
<p>Text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text</p>
Additionally, if your body is empty, t won't have a height, thus making it essentially invisible.
*
selects all the elements and this code
* {
background-color: white;
}
changes every element's background color to white. Then you override the body background color to grey because the element selector 'body' is more specific then *
body {
background-color: grey;
}
you don't see it because you don't have any content in the body.
Here you can see the css selectors and how to Calculating a selector's specificity