Question

I use jQuery Validate plugin to highlight errors. It replaces color of the text with red, which is OK for all elements except one – .help-block, it should remain blue.

Here is the code without error:

<div class="control-group">
    <label class="control-label" for="place-of-birth">Place of birth</label>
    <div class="controls">
      <p class="help-block">Please input place of birth below, 2-80 symbols</p>
      <input type="text" class="input-xlarge" id="place-of-birth" name="place-of-birth" minlength="2" maxlength="80" autocomplete="off">
    </div>
</div>

And here is with the error message:

<div class="control-group error"> <!-- STYLE IS CHANGED HERE -->
    <label class="control-label" for="place-of-birth">Place of birth</label>
    <div class="controls">
      <p class="help-block">Please input place of birth below, 2-80 symbols</p>
      <input type="text" class="input-xlarge" id="place-of-birth" name="place-of-birth" minlength="2" maxlength="80" autocomplete="off">
      <div class="help-block" generated="true" for="place-of-birth">Please enter at least 2 characters.</div> <!-- THIS LINE IS ADDED -->
    </div>
</div>

I’ve tried to override that with the following CSS:

.control-group .error .help-block { color: blue; }

but it didn’t help. Demo.

What is wrong here?

Answer 1

Change it like this:

.control-group.error .help-block { color: blue; }

If you have two classes on one element there cannot be space between selectors. If there is a space it means that this class belongs to child tag.