Discovering the root cause of a particular style using Chrome Developer Tools.
One useful feature of Chrome Developer Tools is the ability to investigate an element and view all the styles affecting it. By inspecting an element, you can identify the source of each style rule and determine if any rules are being overridden by others. To analyze a specific element on a webpage, simply right-click on the element (such as a paragraph) and select "Inspect Element". Alternatively, you can manually open the dev tools and navigate through the DOM (the live representation of the HTML code) to locate the desired HTML element.
Hovering over an HTML element in the DOM will highlight it on the page, while clicking on it will display the applied CSS rules in the right pane. Each selector will indicate its corresponding CSS file, with overridden rules crossed out and irrelevant rules grayed out.
Utilize this tool to check if your styling rule is being overshadowed by another.
Forcing a style to take precedence in CSS above all else.
In normal circumstances, CSS rules follow a hierarchy based on specificity. When conflicting rules arise, the browser prioritizes the more specific selector. To ensure a CSS rule prevails over all others, including previous overrides, you can use the !important declaration. However, excessive use of !important is discouraged due to the complexity it introduces for debugging and maintenance.
To apply the !important declaration, simply add it before the semicolon in the CSS rule. The example below illustrates how specificity works and how the declaration overrides it.
p.test {
color: #000000;
text-decoration: underline;
}
p {
/* This rule takes precedence, even though 'p' selector
* has lower specificity than 'p.test'. */
color: #FF0000 !important;
/* This rule is not applied as specificity is not overridden. */
text-decoration: none;
}
<p class="test">
This is a paragraph.
</p>