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CSS How to Make a Website CSS: Cascading Style Sheets Use ID Selectors

Posted by Danielle Massey
Danielle Massey
Courses Plus Student 353 Points

Why do you override code in .css instead of deleting it?

I noticed that in CSS, when you want to override a code, you write a different code under it so that the browsers follows that rule that come last. But my question is, why don't we just delete the rule that we do not want to use rather than writing another one beneath it that overrides it?

2 Answers

Douglas Miles
Douglas Miles
2,193 Points
Douglas Miles
Douglas Miles
2,193 Points

Good question, I think it has more to do with when you get into complex things like multiple selectors, and media query's. Also when you start using multiple css files it is better to overwrite a property than it is to find what property has specificity than deleting it. Or when you take normalize.css or something that someone else coded, you don't really want to change their code so you override it, and css gives us that choice. Just realize their is a reason for it and as you learn more about css it will make more sense. (hope this helps)

here is an article by smashing magazine that explains spacificity. http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/07/27/css-specificity-things-you-should-know/

Danielle Massey
PLUS
Danielle Massey
Courses Plus Student 353 Points
Danielle Massey
Danielle Massey
Courses Plus Student 353 Points

Thank you so much for your feedback! That makes perfect sense and I can see how that would shorten the coding time and make web design more efficient!

Douglas Miles
Douglas Miles
2,193 Points
Douglas Miles
Douglas Miles
2,193 Points

your welcome, just wait until you start using sass or less to write your css.. talk about making it more efficient. =)