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CSS Inheritance

By Priya PedamkarPriya Pedamkar

CSS Inheritance

Introduction to CSS Inheritance

The following article provides an outline for CSS Inheritance. Cascading style sheet offers all the dynamic features needed by a developer to make the coding practice standardized. Inheritance is one such feature that leverages the ability to use a styling feature of the parent entity in a child entity. This gives ease to the coding, as a common property need not be styled twice or multiple times. This makes sure that lines of code are in check and best practices are followed. The use of ‘inherit’ keyword makes sure that the property is adopted from the parent entity to the child entity.

Syntax of CSS Inheritance

When we define properties for a parent entity like body, head, they become the parent properties that can be inherited in child entities like paragraphs, classes, id’s, etc.

The syntax :

Parent{
property1: value1;
property2:value2;
}
child{
property1: inherit;
propert2:value3;
}

As we can see in the syntax example above, use of the keyword ‘inherit’ makes sure that particular property, property1 in our case, is inherited from the parent. Other properties of the child class can differ.

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Examples of CSS Inheritance

Given below are the examples mentioned :

Example #1

Demonstration of Inheritance using External CSS.

a. Since this example uses external CSS, we will create the CSS file first.

b. In the CSS file, we will style for a parent property. For this example, we will style for the body element <body>.

Code:

body{
color: blueviolet;
font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium', 'Arial Narrow', Arial, sans-serif;
font-style: normal;
height: 100px;
width: 500px;
}

c. Once the body is styled for, we will define a child class and inherit the property.

Code:

.extra{
color: inherit;
font-family: inherit;
font-style: italic;
height: 80px;
width: 180px;
text-align: center;
}

d. The final CSS code should be similar to this. Please note, other properties can be added as per the choice.

Code:

body{
color: blueviolet;
font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium', 'Arial Narrow', Arial, sans-serif;
font-style: normal;
height: 100px;
width: 500px;
}
h2{
color: maroon;
}
.extra{
color: inherit;
font-family: inherit;
font-style: italic;
height: 80px;
width: 180px;
text-align: center;
}

e. Moving on to the HTML file, since this is an external CSS example, we will call the CSS file in the header section. It should be something like this.

Code:

<head>
<title>Inheritance Using CSS</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="inheritance.css">
</head>

f. In the body section, we will call for a paragraph and then another one with the class.

Code:

<body>
<h2>Demonstration of Inheritance Using CSS</h2>
<p>This paragraph will demonstrate the use of inheritance. Body tag    has been styled for certain properties like color, font-style, font-size, etc. Some of the properties are inherited in a child class. </p>
<p class="extra">This is the paragraph which uses the child entity, where we have inherited the properties color and font-family. Rest of the properties have been defined separately for the child  class</p>
</body>

g. The final code for the HTML page will look like this.

Code:

<html>
<head>
<title>Inheritance Using CSS</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="inheritance.css">
</head>
<body>
<h2>Demonstration of Inheritance Using CSS</h2>
<p>This paragraph will demonstrate the use of inheritance. Body tag has been styled for certain properties like color, font-style, font-size, etc. Some of the properties are inherited in a child class.</p>
<p class="extra">This is the paragraph which uses the child entity, where we have inherited the properties color and font-family. Rest of the properties have been defined separately for the child class</p>
</body>
</html>

h. When we will save these files and open the html file through the browser, the following output will be generated.

Output:

CSS Inheritance 1

i. As we can see in the screenshot above, the first paragraph which was written under <p> tag inherited all its properties from that of the body. However, the next paragraph was defined with a class, and hence it has inherited the properties it was explicitly made to, and rest are its own properties as defined in the CSS code.

Example #2

Demonstration of Inheritance using Internal CSS.

a. We will execute the same code, using internal CSS in this example.

b. Since this example is using internal CSS, we will declare the styling in the header section.

Code for head section:

<style>
body{
color: blueviolet;
font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium', 'Arial Narrow', Arial, sans-serif;
font-style: normal;
height: 100px;
width: 500px;
}
h2{
color: green;
}
.extra{
color: inherit;
font-family: inherit;
font-style: italic;
height: 80px;
width: 180px;
text-align: center;
}
</style>

c. Once the styling is done, in the body section, we will call two paragraphs. One without any class, one with class.

Code for body section:

<body>
<h2>Demonstration of Inheritance Using CSS</h2>
<p>This paragraph will demonstrate the use of inheritance. Body tag has been styled for certain properties like color, font-style, font-size, etc. Some of the properties are inherited in a child class.</p>
<p class="extra">This is the paragraph which uses the child entity, where we have inherited the properties color and font-family. Rest of the properties have been defined separately for the child class</p>
</body>

d. The final code of the HTML file will look like this.

Code:

<html>
<head>
<title>Inheritance Using CSS</title>
<style>
body{
color: blueviolet;
font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium', 'Arial Narrow', Arial, sans-serif;
font-style: normal;
height: 100px;
width: 500px;
}
h2{
color: green;
}
.extra{
color: inherit;
font-family: inherit;
font-style: italic;
height: 80px;
width: 180px;
text-align: center;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h2>Demonstration of Inheritance Using CSS</h2>
<p>This paragraph will demonstrate the use of inheritance. Body tag has been styled for certain properties like color, font-style, font-size, etc. Some of the properties are inherited in a child class.</p>
<p class="extra">This is the paragraph which uses the child entity, where we have inherited the properties color and font-family. Rest of the properties have been defined separately for the child class</p>
</body>
</html>

e. Saving this file as HTML will give the following output.

Output:

CSS Inheritance 2

In the above two examples, we got the basic idea of how inheritance in CSS works.

Recommended Articles

This is a guide to CSS Inheritance. Here we discuss the introduction to CSS Inheritance along with examples respectively. You may also have a look at the following articles to learn more –

  1. CSS Drop Shadow
  2. CSS 3D Transforms
  3. CSS Pseudo Elements
  4. Sticky Footer CSS
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