Question

I am wondering if there is some way to change a CSS attribute for the last li in a list using CSS. I have looked into using :last-child, but this seems really buggy and I can’t get it to work for me. I will use JavaScript to do this if necessary, but I want to know if anyone can think up a solution in CSS.

Answer 1

:last-child is really the only way to do it without modifying the HTML – but assuming you can do that, the main option is just to give it a class="last-item", then do:

li.last-item { /* ... */ }

Obviously, you can automate this in the dynamic page generation language of your choice. Also, there is a lastChild JavaScript property in the W3C DOM.

Here’s an example of doing what you want in Prototype:

$$("ul").each(function(x) { $(x.lastChild).addClassName("last-item"); });

Or even more simply:

$$("ul li:last-child").each(function(x) { x.addClassName("last-item"); });

In jQuery, you can write it even more compactly:

$("ul li:last-child").addClass("last-item");

Also note that this should work without using the actual last-child CSS selector – rather, a JavaScript implementation of it is used – so it should be less buggy and more reliable across browsers.