What could be causing the unexpected behavior of display:initial?

I have a child image that is initially hidden, but shows up when someone hovers over the parent image. The issue I am facing is that when the child image appears, it does so on the right-hand side of the parent image.

I was under the impression that it would appear below the parent image by default. Shouldn't setting the display to "initial" return the element to its default state?

.child {
  display:none;
}

.parent:hover .child {
  display:initial;
}
<div class="parent">
    <img src="https://lh4.ggpht.com/wKrDLLmmxjfRG2-E-k5L5BUuHWpCOe4lWRF7oVs1Gzdn5e5yvr8fj-ORTlBF43U47yI=w300">
  <div class="child">
    <img src="http://xiostorage.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/test.png" width="200">
  </div>
</div>

This query is solely for my understanding of the CSS property display:initial. I am not looking to position the child image above, below, to the right or left of the parent image.

Answer №1

When you use the value initial, its meaning varies depending on the property it's assigned to.

If it's assigned to a non-inherited property, such as display, it will take on the default initial value specified in the CSS specification, rather than any value previously defined in your stylesheet. This is why you may notice the behavior where display defaults to inline.

On the other hand, if initial is assigned to an inherited property like color, it will inherit any previously defined value from your stylesheet. If no value has been set, it will revert back to the browser-specific default value (often black for color).

For more information:

initial - CSS | MDN

initial value - CSS | MDN

display - CSS | MDN

inheritance - CSS | MDN

Answer №2

The value simply known as 'initial' represents the starting point for the entire property without any external dependencies.

For instance: When using display: initial;, the default setting is inline, which is predetermined as the initial value of the property.

In most scenarios, the default display for browsers is block due to the element being a div.

Hopefully that sheds some light on the concept for you.

Answer №3

The default state for a specific element is known as the initial state.

Elements such as div or p are inherently set to display: block. Therefore, changing it to display: initial would not make any difference.

On the other hand, an img tag is initially styled with display: inline. So switching it to display: initial is essentially equivalent to setting it back to inline.

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