Pseudo-Elements

Pseudo-elements, just like pseudo-classes, are added to a CSS selectors but instead of describing a special state, they allow you to scope and style certain parts of an html element.

For example, the ::first-letter pseudo-element targets only the first letter of a block element specified by the selector.

Pseudo-Elements

Pseudo-elements are added to selectors but instead of describing a special state, they allow you to style certain parts of a document.

The content attribute is required for pseudo-elements to render; however, the attribute can have an empty value (e.g. content: "").

div::after {
  content: "after";
  color: red;
  border: 1px solid red;
}

div {
  color: black;
  border: 1px solid black;
  padding: 1px;
}

div::before {
  content: "before";
  color: green;
  border: 1px solid green;
}

Pseudo-Elements in Lists

Pseudo-elements are often used to change the look of lists (mostly for unordered lists, ul).

The first step is to remove the default list bullets:

ul {
  list-style-type: none;
}

Then you add the custom styling. In this example, we will create gradient boxes for bullets.

li:before {
  content: "";
  display: inline-block;
  margin-right: 10px;
  height: 10px;
  width: 10px;
  background: linear-gradient(red, blue);
}

HTML

<ul>
   <li>Test I</li>
   <li>Test II</li>
</ul>

Result

Syntax

selector::pseudo-element {property: value}

Parameters

pseudo-element	Description
`::after`	Insert content after the content of an element
`::before`	Insert content before the content of an element
`::first-letter`	Selects the first letter of each element
`::first-line`	Selects the first line of each element
`::selection`	Matches the portion of an element that is selected by a user
`::backdrop`	Used to create a backdrop that hides the underlying document for an element in the top layer’s stack
`::placeholder`	Allows you to style the placeholder text of a form element (Experimental)
`::marker`	For applying list-style attributes on a given element (Experimental)
`::spelling-error`	Represents a text segment which the browser has flagged as incorrectly spelled (Experimental)
`::grammar-error`	Represents a text segment which the browser has flagged as grammatically incorrect (Experimental)

Remarks

Sometimes you will see double colons (`::`) instead of just one (`:`). This is a way to separate pseudo-classes from pseudo-elements, but some older browsers like Internet Explorer 8 **only** supports single colon (`:`) for pseudo-elements.

One can use only one pseudo-element in a selector. It must appear after the simple selectors in the statement.

Pseudo-elements are not a part of the DOM, therefore are not targetable by `:hover` or other user events.