In this blog, we will discuss CSS Pseudo-elements and their properties. If you are a frontend developer then you heard "Pseudo-elements" many times especially while giving the interview process.

Apart from the interview process, Pseudo-elements widely use while creating styling without writing multiple lines of CSS code.

We will break down Pseudo-elements step by step with examples.

Pseudo-elements

• A CSS pseudo-element is a keyword added to a selector that lets you style a specific part of the selected element(s).

" Ok, wait a minute. Easily, you can understand like this"

• The CSS pseudo-elements allow you to style the elements or parts of the elements without adding any IDs or classes to them.

• CSS3 introduced a new double-colon ( :: ) syntax for pseudo-elements to distinguish between them and pseudo-classes.

selector::pseudo-element { property: value; }

Types of CSS pseudo-elements

here is a list of different pseudo-elements that modern browsers support:-

1. ::before

2. ::after

3. ::first-letter

4. ::first-line

5. ::marker

6. ::placeholder

7. ::selection

8. ::backdrop

9. ::file-selector-button

10. ::cue

11. ::spelling-error

1. (::before)

The :: before keyword creates a pseudo-element that appears just before the content of the selected HTML element.

here in this example if you want to add some text inside <p> tag but before written text then use "::before".

2. (::after)

The :: after keyword creates a pseudo-element that appears just after the content of the selected HTML element.

Like ::before, ::after has an inline display by default and takes a content property to function.

here in this example if you want to add some text inside <p> tag but after written text then use "::after".

3. (::first-letter)

::first-letter is automatically targeted to the first letter of the displayed text block.

If you want to display the first letter always upperCase, coloured, bold and so on. ::first-letter always give a smooth way to display like drop caps.

But keep an eye on using ::before and ::first-letter.

• The ::before pseudo-element acts as the first child of a given element.

• This will cause ::first-letter to prefer the generated content added by it over actual content at the time of selection.

like this example:-

4. (::first-line)

::first-line, we can easily select the first line of text in a block element.

5. (::marker)

• ::marker works with anything with a list-item display.

• <li> and <summary> Elements are some of its general applications:

li::marker {
  content: "💕";
}

6. (::placeholder)

• As the name suggests, the ::placeholder pseudo-element allows you to style the placeholder of form input elements.

• Most browsers, by default, have light gray colored placeholders. Here’s how we can modify them using the CSS code below:

7. (::selection)

::selection pseudo-element enables you to customize the styles for this highlighting:

8. (::backdrop)

The ::backdrop CSS pseudo-element represents a viewport-sized box rendered immediately beneath any element being presented in full-screen mode.

9. (::file-selector-button)

• The HTML file input element displays a button that seems impossible to style with CSS.

• To your surprise, the ::file-selector-button pseudo-element lets you customize that button, and here’s a working demonstration of that:

input[type="file"]::file-selector-button {
  background-color: blue;
  color: white;
  ...
}

10. (::cue)

• The ::cue CSS pseudo-element matches WebVTT (Web Video Text Tracks Format) cues within a selected element.

• This can be used to style captions and other cues in media with VTT tracks.

11. (::spelling-error)

The ::spelling-error CSS pseudo-element represents a text segment which the user agent has flagged as incorrectly spelled.

Finally, we reach the end of the blog, and we learned about CSS pseudo-elements and their different applications.

Above given examples are easy just to understand the basic use of pseudo-elements. If you use functionally, it helps to reduce the line of code and avoid more jsx functionality as well as.