CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cssinheritancemedia-queriescss-cascade
Bucky
Bucky

Reputation: 929

Why don't CSS media queries follow the normal conventions of inheritance and cascade?

I've been having some issues with my CSS3 media queries...

Here's a small snippet of one I'm currently working on:

@media only screen 
and (max-width : 420px) {
    .page { min-width: 300px; max-width: 480px; width: 100%; }
    .page .alpha { font-size: 2em; }

    /* Set-up the column */
    .page .column { margin: 0 auto 2%; width: auto; }
    .page .gallery .column { min-height: 470px; height: auto; padding: 2%; }
}

/* Increase the main title for slightly larger screens! */
@media only screen 
and (max-width : 480px) {
    .page .alpha { font-size: 3em; }
}

I'm working from a 'mobile first' standpoint and given the normal behaviour of CSS regarding the 'cascading' aspect I would expect the second @media statement to inherit all of the styles from the previous statement, whilst overriding any for which it has a matching or 'heavier' selector.

(Plus CSS's order of precedence would mean any matching style definitions would use the last defined rule-set unless 'trumped' with an !important statement!)

From what I've seen though, through testing and some Google / SE searches this is not the case.

Is it possible for @media style rules to inherit from applicable earlier statements or am I stuck with having to repeat all the rules I need for each statement? (not very DRY)

I'd really appreciate any help and clarifications / explanations for this.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3841

Answers (2)

Bucky
Bucky

Reputation: 929

Firstly thanks @BoltClock (for both comments), and to the other comments and answers for all your help.

I think I made a mistake in my media queries and/or was miss-understanding how they worked and interacted together. I was going to edit my question with the following but decided it would make more sense as an answer (since it's the solution I used). I apologise if this has wasted anyone else's time.

Here's my fixed snippet of code:

@media only screen 
and (max-width : 480px) {
    .page { min-width: 300px; max-width: 480px; width: 100%; }
    .page .alpha { font-size: 2em; }

    /* Set-up the column */
    .page .column { margin: 0 auto 2%; width: auto; }
    .page .gallery .column { min-height: 470px; height: auto; padding: 2%; }
}
/* Increase the main title for slightly larger screens! */
@media only screen 
and (min-width : 421px)
and (max-width : 480px) {
    .page .alpha { font-size: 3em; }
}

I realised from your comments that if I increased the max-width in my first block to cover the necessary range/limit I could then either nest or add the second block after it (I tried both and they both worked for me -- using chromium browser [18.0.1025.151]). This successfully gave me the desired result, in that the page .alpha element's font size increased at the required stepping/interval.

Thanks again for all SO'ers who helped! (and to SE for the awesome communities they've helped build)

Knowledge > OpenSource > Freedom

Upvotes: 3

Neograph734
Neograph734

Reputation: 1754

If you want to work from mobile up, you will need to set the mobile layout as the default layout. (Remove the query). From there the queries will inherit from above.

.page { min-width: 300px; max-width: 480px; width: 100%; }
.page .alpha { font-size: 2em; }

 /* Set-up the column */
.page .column { margin: 0 auto 2%; width: auto; }
.page .gallery .column { min-height: 470px; height: auto; padding: 2%; }

/* Increase the main title for slightly larger screens! */
@media only screen 
and (max-width : 480px) {
    .page .alpha { font-size: 3em; }
}

Upvotes: 1

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