Unlocking the Power of CSS Inheritance

What is CSS Inheritance?

CSS inheritance allows child elements to inherit styles from their parent elements. When a property is not specified on a child element, it will automatically inherit the value from its parent element. This behavior is similar to how children inherit physical traits from their parents.

How Does CSS Inheritance Work?

CSS rulesets cascade down the CSS hierarchy from parent selectors to their child selectors. If a CSS property is not specified on a child element, it will inherit the value from its parent element. For example:

.parent {
  color: red;
}

.child {
  /* inherits color: red from.parent */
}

In this example, the .child element will automatically inherit the color property value from its parent element .parent.

Which CSS Properties are Inherited?

Not all CSS properties are inherited. The following properties are inherited:

• Font-related properties: font-size, font-family, and font-weight
• The color property

On the other hand, the following properties are not inherited:

• height, width, border, margin, and padding

The Power of the inherit Keyword

The inherit keyword allows us to enable inheritance on non-inheritable CSS properties. When we set a property to inherit, it takes the value from its parent element. This applies to all CSS properties, not just inheritable ones.

.parent {
  border: 1px solid black;
}

.child {
  border: inherit; /* inherits border from.parent */
}

Understanding initial, unset, and revert

In addition to inherit, there are three other keywords that play a crucial role in CSS inheritance:

• initial: sets the property value to its default value, as defined in the browser’s default style sheet
• unset: resets the property value to its inherited value if it’s an inherited property, or to its initial value if it’s a non-inherited property
• revert: reverses the CSS default values to the browser user-agent styles

By mastering these keywords, you can take control of CSS inheritance and create more efficient and effective stylesheets.

Taking Your CSS Skills to the Next Level

With this knowledge, you can create more complex and nuanced stylesheets that take advantage of CSS inheritance. Practice using these keywords to unlock the full potential of CSS inheritance.