remove / reset inherited css from an element

Question

I know this question was asked before, but before marking it as a duplicate, I want to tell you that my situation is a little different from what I found on the internet.

I'm building and embedded script that people can put it on their sites. This script creates a div with a certain width/height and some information in it.

My problem is that some websites declare styles for div that are inherited by my div as well.

for example:

div{
    background-color:red;
}

so if I don't set any background color to my div, it will show red even if I don't want that.

The only solutions I come along is to overwrite as many css proprieties, this way my div will show exactly as I want. The problem with this solution is that there are too many css proprieties to overwrite and I want my script to be as light as it can be.

So my question is if you know another solution to my problem. It can be in css/javascript /jQuery.

Thanks

Answer 1

"Resetting" styles for a specific element isn't possible, you'll have to overwrite all styles you don't want/need. If you do this with CSS directly or using JQuery to apply the styles (depends on what's easier for you, but I wouldn't recommend using JavaScript/JQuery for this, as it's completely unnecessary).

If your div is some kind of "widget" that can be included into other sites, you could try to wrap it into an iframe. This will "reset" the styles, because its content is another document, but maybe this affects how your widget works (or maybe breaks it completely) so this might not be possible in your case.

Answer 2

Only set the relevant / important CSS properties.

Example (only change the attributes which may cause your div to look completely different):

background: #FFF;
border: none;
color: #000;
display: block;
font: initial;
height: auto;
letter-spacing: normal;
line-height: normal;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
text-transform: none;
visibility: visible;
width: auto;
word-spacing: normal;
z-index: auto;

Choose a very specific selector, such as div#donttouchme, <div id="donttouchme"></div>. Additionally, you can add `!important before every semicolon in the declaration. Your customers are deliberately trying to mess up your lay-out when this option fails.

Answer 3

You could try overwriting the CSS and use auto

I don't think this will work with color specifically, but I ran into an issue where i had a parent property such as

.parent {
   left: 0px;
}

and then I was able to just define my child with something like

.child {
   left: auto;
}

and it effectively "reset" the property.

Answer 4

Technically what you are looking for is the unset value in combination with the shorthand property all:

The unset CSS keyword resets a property to its inherited value if it inherits from its parent, and to its initial value if not. In other words, it behaves like the inherit keyword in the first case, and like the initial keyword in the second case. It can be applied to any CSS property, including the CSS shorthand all.

.customClass {
  /* specific attribute */
  color: unset; 
}

.otherClass{
  /* unset all attributes */
  all: unset; 
  /* then set own attributes */
  color: red;
}

You can use the initial value as well, this will default to the initial browser value.

.otherClass{
  /* unset all attributes */
  all: initial; 
  /* then set own attributes */
  color: red;
}

As an alternative:
If possible it is probably good practice to encapsulate the class or id in a kind of namespace:

.namespace .customClass{
  color: red;
}

<div class="namespace">
  <div class="customClass"></div>
</div>

because of the specificity of the selector this will only influence your own classes

It is easier to accomplish this in "preprocessor scripting languages" like SASS with nesting capabilities:

.namespace{
  .customClass{
    color: red
  }
}

Answer 5

Try this: Create a plain div without any style or content outside of the red div. Now you can use a loop over all styles of the plain div and assign then to your inner div to reset all styles.

Of course this doesn't work if someone assigns styles to all divs (i.e. without using a class. CSS would be div { ... }).

The usual solution for problems like this is to give your div a distinct class. That way, web designers of the sites can adjust the styling of your div to fit into the rest of the design.

Answer 6

As long as they are attributes like classes and ids you can remove them by javascript/jQuery class modifiers.

document.getElementById("MyElement").className = "";

There is no way to remove specific tag CSS other than overriding them (or using another element).

Answer 7

you may use this below option.

<style>
  div:not(.no_common_style){
      background-color:red;
  }
</style>

now , if their any place where you do not want to apply default style you can use 'no_common_style' class as class. ex:

<div class="no_common_style">
  It will not display in red
</div>

Answer 8

From what I understand you want to use a div that inherits from no class but yours. As mentioned in the previous reply you cannot completely reset a div inheritance. However, what worked for me with that issue was to use another element - one that is not frequent and certainly not used in the current html page. A good example, is to use instead of then customize it to look just like your ideal would.

area { background-color : red; }

Answer 9

One simple approach would be to use the !important modifier in css, but this can be overridden in the same way from users.

Maybe a solution can be achieved with jquery by traversing the entire DOM to find your (re)defined classes and removing / forcing css styles.