Question

Here is an example of my HTML and CSS. I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why the second rule is applying to all the buttons, and not just the first three.

HTML

<div id="test">
<ul>
<li><button>1</button></li>
<li><button>2</button></li>
<li><button>3</button></li>
<li><button>4</button></li>
<li><button>5</button></li>
<li><button>6</button></li>
    </ul>
</div>

CSS

#test button
{
    background-color: blue;
}

#test button:nth-child(-n + 3) 
{
    background-color: red;
}

#test button:hover {
    background-color: green;
}

Answer 1

You’re applying nth-child to the wrong element: there is only 1 child of each button. You mean to target the li elements:

#test ul li:nth-child(-n + 3) button
{
    background-color: red;
}

http://jsfiddle.net/fCFEn/3/