Using CSS selectors is not a difficult skill–all of us who use CSS use selectors on every line of code that we write.  However, as not as many know, there are more exotic selectors available.

Blah blah blah.  You can read all about CSS selectors at W3, and I don't want to rehash what has already been fully documented.  So instead, let me go a different direction.

Why, you might ask, would I possibly want or need to use a fancy CSS selector like ":first-child" or something more granular like an attribute selector (a[href="http://askaninja.com"])?

Well, maybe you'll never want or need to.  If you have the luxury of coding everything you do from scratch, you'll probably find little use for these.  However, most of us do not have ideal circumstances like this.

Consider this:  Where I work, we are using an enterprise information management software for our employee intranet.  While the product itself is quite powerful, whoever built the layouts and templates that come boxed with the products are certifiable idiots.  Strewn across hundreds of layout files in obscure, inaccessible (well, at least to me…) folders are inumerable styles, both external and inline, that handle the "design" of this product.

Can anyone say nightmare?  Believe More >