Question

Possible Duplicate:
What does an asterisk do in a CSS property name?

I am trying to figure out what the asterisk (*) means next to the “vertical-align: middle” property in this CSS file:

button, input, select, textarea { 
  font-family: sans-serif; 
  font-size: 100%; 
  margin: 0; 
  vertical-align: baseline; 
  *vertical-align: middle; 
}

Also, why would “vertical-align” be repeated twice, with the asterisk value different than the first?

I know what it means next to the class name, but I’ve never seen it next to a property.

Answer 1

It’s a CSS hack. Only IE7 and below will recognize it.

I wouldn’t recommend using it. Instead, use IE conditional comments to render a different class name for the BODY tag depending on the version of IE being used.

When I have to deal with old versions of IE, I use a method similar to this:

http://nicolasgallagher.com/better-conditional-classnames-for-hack-free-css/