DZone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
Refcards Trend Reports
Events Video Library
Refcards
Trend Reports

Events

View Events Video Library

Related

  • Programmatic Brand Extraction: Pulling Logos, Colors, and Assets from Any URL
  • The Death of the CSS Selector: Architecting Resilient, AI-Powered Web Scrapers
  • A Guide to Parallax and Scroll-Based Animations
  • Building a Card Layout Using CSS Subgrid

Trending

  • Give Your AI Assistant Long-Term Memory With perag
  • 7 Technology Waves I’ve Seen in 30 Years of Software — Will AI Be the Next Real Transformation?
  • Operationalizing Enterprise AI at Scale: Architecture, Governance, and Adoption
  • A Walk-Through of the DZone Article Editor
  1. DZone
  2. Coding
  3. Languages
  4. Use CSS to Override Default Text Selection Color

Use CSS to Override Default Text Selection Color

By 
Chris Coyier user avatar
Chris Coyier
·
Feb. 01, 08 · News
Likes (0)
Comment
Save
Tweet
Share
32.3K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free
[img_assist|nid=654|title=|desc=|link=none|align=middle|width=500|height=146]
One of those cool CSS3 declarations that you can use today is ::selection, which overrides your browser-level or system-level text highlight color with a color of your choosing. At the time of this writing, only Safari and Firefox are supporting this, and both in slightly different ways. Fortunately, this can be thought of as one of those "forward-enhancement" techniques. It's a nice touch for those using modern browsers, but it just gets ignored in other browsers and it's not a big deal.

Here is the rub:

::selection {
background: #ffb7b7; /* Safari */
}
::-moz-selection {
background: #ffb7b7; /* Firefox */
}


Within the selection selector, background is the only property that works. What you CAN do for some extra flair, is change the selection color for different paragraphs or different sections of the page.

[VIEW EXAMPLE]

All I did was use different selection color for paragraphs with different classes:

p.red::selection {
background: #ffb7b7;
}
p.red::-moz-selection {
background: #ffb7b7;
}
p.blue::selection {
background: #a8d1ff;
}
p.blue::-moz-selection {
background: #a8d1ff;
}
p.yellow::selection {
background: #fff2a8;
}
p.yellow::-moz-selection {
background: #fff2a8;
}


Original post here.
CSS

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Related

  • Programmatic Brand Extraction: Pulling Logos, Colors, and Assets from Any URL
  • The Death of the CSS Selector: Architecting Resilient, AI-Powered Web Scrapers
  • A Guide to Parallax and Scroll-Based Animations
  • Building a Card Layout Using CSS Subgrid

Partner Resources

×

Comments

The likes didn't load as expected. Please refresh the page and try again.

  • RSS
  • X
  • Facebook

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Support and feedback
  • Community research

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • Become a Contributor
  • Core Program
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 3343 Perimeter Hill Drive
  • Suite 215
  • Nashville, TN 37211
  • [email protected]

Let's be friends:

  • RSS
  • X
  • Facebook