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CSS CSS Selectors Advanced Selectors :root and :target

Posted by Benjamin Hedgepeth
Benjamin Hedgepeth
5,672 Points

Applying background-color to :root vs body

What factors would lead to applying a background color to the body element and not the :root and vice-versa?

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,268 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,268 Points

If the body had styles applied that caused it to not cover the entire viewport (such as an explicit width or margins), you might want to apply a background to its parent element instead. And for the same reason, you might want to use the body to limit it only to the body area.

Note that for an HTML document, the html selector will target the same thing as :root, though :root has a higher specificity (class vs. tag).

Kailash Seshadri
Kailash Seshadri
3,087 Points
Kailash Seshadri
Kailash Seshadri
3,087 Points

So in a HTML document, 

html {
  background: white;
}

and

:root {
  background: white;
}

will do the same thing to the webpage.