Is it considered ineffective to define default CSS rules?

For instance, consider a scenario where there is a table. The conventional alignment practice (whether it's an HTML specification or specific to the browsers in use) appears to be left aligning the body elements and center aligning the head elements.

If the intention is to have everything left aligned, would it be less effective to input

#MyTable td {
    text-align: left;
}

instead of specifying

#MyTable tbody td {
    text-align: left;
}

Does this distinction really matter in terms of efficiency?

What approach is considered best practice in this situation?

The actual question here pertains to how default styles are established. Are they explicitly defined by the browser if no corresponding style is found in the CSS? Or do they represent inherent default behaviors when no style rules are present.

Answer №1

To view the default and computed style of the browser, use firebug/webkit built-in inspector. Selector matching occurs from right to left, so theoretically the first selector should be faster. However, in practice there is little to no difference, even with around 100 elements. If you want to write efficient selectors, remember this simple rule: Make the rightmost selector as specific as possible.

Answer №2

Typically, content is aligned to the left by default unless specified otherwise (although exceptions exist for languages like Arabic). While there is a recommended stylesheet for HTML elements, it is not formally part of the specification.

If you find yourself needing to override the text-align property for each table separately, it can become somewhat complex. Browsers process CSS rules from right to left, so they first identify all td elements and then look for a parent element with that ID. A simpler approach would be:

td {
    text-align: left;
}

However, it may be more practical to only apply this method to elements where alignment differs from the default, such as the <th> element.

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