input type text CSS selector does not apply to default-type text inputs

Question

The default input type is  text   I have always assumed then that CSS declarations targeting input type  text   would affect those inputs even if the type was not explicitly declared on the control  However  I just noticed that my default-type text inputs do not get the styles  Why is this the case  And how can I address this    x000D   x000D  input type  text     x000D    background  red  x000D    x000D   lt input name  t1  type  text    gt     Is Red    x000D   lt input name  t1    gt     Is Not Red    x000D   x000D   x000D

User · Answer

Because  it is not supposed to do that   input type text      is an attribute selector  and will only select those element  with the matching attribute

User · Answer

By CSS specifications  browsers may or may not use information about default attributes  mostly the don   t  The relevant clause in the CSS 2 1 spec is 5 8 2 Default attribute values in DTDs  In CSS 3 Selectors  it   s clause 6 3 4  with the same name  It recommends     Selectors should be designed so that they work whether or not the default values are included in the document tree      It is generally best to explicitly specify essential attributes such as type text instead of defaulting them  The reason is that there is no simple reliable way to refer to the input elements with defaulted type attribute

User · Answer

The CSS uses only the data in the DOM tree  which has little to do with how the renderer decides what to do with elements with missing attributes   So either let the CSS reflect the HTML  input not  type    input type  text     background red      or make the HTML explicit    lt input name  t1  type  text   gt     Is Not Red      If it didn t do that  you d never be able to distinguish between  element      properties        and   element attr       properties        because all attributes would always be defined on all elements   For example  table always has a border attribute  with 0 for a default

User · Answer

try this   input type  text         background red  important

User · Answer

To be compliant with all browsers you should always declare the input type    Some browsers will assume default type as  text   but this isn t a good practice

[css] input[type='text'] CSS selector does not apply to default-type text inputs?

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