Question

is this a legitimate use of * selector, and if so are there references to how browsers support this? it seems to work in all browsers I have test, but I haven’t used older ones or IE

body * {
   float: left;
}

Answer 1

Yes it is! The asterisk is a wildcard, it will select all elements within that DOM element you set it to.

For example, if I you want to apply an attribute to your whole site:

* {
    attribute: value;
}

Or as you did it with a special DOM element!

 element * {
     attribute: value;
    }

You could also use something like:

* { 
     attribute: value;
  }

* * { ... }

* * * { ... }

* div * { ... }

Which is a bit difficult… like a recursion.