[html] How do I select an element that has a certain class?

My understanding is that using element.class should allow for a specific element assigned to a class to receive different "styling" than the rest of the class. This is not a question about whether this should be used or not, but rather I'm trying to understand how this selector is intended to work. From looking at a ton of examples on the internet, I believe the syntax is correct and do not understand why this is not working.

Here is an example:

CSS:

h2 {
    color: red;
}

.myClass {
    color: green;
}

h2.myClass {
    color: blue;
}

HTML:

<h2>This header should be RED to match the h2 element selector</h2>
<div class="myClass">
    <h1>This header should be GREEN to match the class selector</h1>
    <h2>This header should be BLUE to match the element.class selector</h2>
</div>

The element.class selector is for styling situations such as this:

<span class="large"> </span>
<p class="large"> </p>

.large {
    font-size:150%; font-weight:bold;
}

p.large {
    color:blue;
}

Both your span and p will be assigned the font-size and font-weight from .large, but the color blue will only be assigned to p.

As others have pointed out, what you're working with is descendant selectors.

h2.myClass is only valid for h2 elements which got the class myClass directly assigned.

Your want to note it like this:

.myClass h2

Which selects all children of myClass which have the tagname h2

h2.myClass refers to all h2 with class="myClass".

.myClass h2 refers to all h2 that are children of (i.e. nested in) elements with class="myClass".

If you want the h2 in your HTML to appear blue, change the CSS to the following:

.myClass h2 {
    color: blue;
}

If you want to be able to reference that h2 by a class rather than its tag, you should leave the CSS as it is and give the h2 a class in the HTML:

<h2 class="myClass">This header should be BLUE to match the element.class selector</h2>

The CSS :first-child selector allows you to target an element that is the first child element within its parent.

element:first-child { style_properties }
table:first-child { style_properties }

It should be this way:

h2.myClass looks for h2 with class myClass. But you actually want to apply style for h2 inside .myClass so you can use descendant selector .myClass h2.

h2 {
    color: red;
}

.myClass {
    color: green;
}

.myClass h2 {
    color: blue;
}

Demo

This ref will give you some basic idea about the selectors and have a look at descendant selectors