Universal (*) Selector

  • Article

Matches any element type.

Syntax

HTML * { sRules }
Scripting N/A

Possible Values

sRules String that specifies one or more Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) attribute/value pairs.

Remarks

The universal selector matches every element in the document tree. If the universal selector is not the only component of a simple selector, the "*" may be omitted. For example:

  • *.myclass and .myclass are equivalent.
  • *#myid and #myid are equivalent.
  • *:hover and :hover are equivalent.

Example

The following style rule draws a thin orange border around every element on the page.

<style>
    * { border: 1px solid orange; }
</style>

Standards Information

This selector is defined in CSS, Level 2 (CSS2).

See Also

Class Selector, Equality [=] Attribute Selector, Existence [] Attribute Selector, Hyphen [|=] Attribute Selector, ID Selector, Prefix [^=] Attribute Selector, Substring [*=] Attribute Selector, Suffix [$=] Attribute Selector, Type Selector, Whitespace [~=] Attribute Selector