Question

In a stylesheet i have:

    * HTML BODY     {         padding-right: 0px;         padding-left: 0px;         padding-bottom: 25px;         padding-top: 190px;     }     * HTML #maincontent     {         width: 100%;         height: 100%;     } 

i know that a . means class and a # means applied to the id, but what does * HTML mean?

Answer 1

The * is the universal selector, and thus matches any element. e.g.

P * { } 

Matches any element which is the child of a P tag

* HTML 

should mean nothing because HTML cannot be the child of anything (by definition). It’s used because IE (edit, at least IE 5 – 6 – thanks RoBorg!) ignores * and so it can be used to define IE specific styles:

HTML {  // Normal styles }  * HTML {  // IE Specific styles  } 

See http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=358552