:has() opens up new possibilities with CSS

The :has() pseudo-class is here, and while it’s often called the parent selector, it can actually do a lot more than that!
🔗 Links
✅ Example One: codepen.io/kevinpowell/pen/jO...
✅ Example Two: codepen.io/kevinpowell/pen/dy...
✅ Example Three: codepen.io/kevinpowell/pen/ZE...
✅ Example Four: codepen.io/kevinpowell/pen/Po...
✅ Browser support: caniuse.com/?search=%3Ahas()
✅ scale, rotate, and translate properties: • A new way to do CSS tr...
✅ Jhey’s fantastic article with more examples: developer.chrome.com/blog/has...
✅ Multiple h1 not supported: html5doctor.com/computer-says...
✅ My video on selectors and combinators: • Step up your CSS game ...
⌚ Timestamps
00:00 - Introduction
00:42 - The basics
04:28 - Browser support
04:58 - Some more practical examples
06:36 - Selecting a element if it has a specific sibling
08:15 - Using it as a preceding sibling selector
11:33 - Selecting all the other siblings
#css
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[@kjul.]

The last example was absolutely mind-blowing. I used to implement something like this with JavaScript or external CSS libraries, now all it takes is a few lines of pure CSS. Wow!

[@ryujiishii3147]

the image-gallery:hover img:not(:hover) selector also works

[@FROZeN_FoCUS]

@@ryujiishii3147 this is only true if the container is filled with the images. If there were actual gaps within the images, then I think your selector would apply the scale even if no image is actually being hovered, whereas this one doesn't. At the same time, your selector is much easier to read, so in this use case it would be better just for that.

[@BigYellowKoala]

@@FROZeN_FoCUS you could avoid this by adding pointer-events: none to the list and pointer-events: all to the images. That way the gaps aren’t recognized by the cursor, the but the siblings still react as you hover on a single img.

[@D7460N]

Wow! The potential... Layouts themselves can be "aware" of and react to what's inside it. app-panel {display: none;} app-panel:has(span.dynamic-content) {display: grid;} Or maybe... app-panel {display: grid;} app-panel:has(span.dynamic-content:empty) {display: none;}

[@windmaomao]

I think the reason why it's possible now is that, a) additional if statement to select based on another set of selectors; b) allow you to operate right away on the found element, ex. parent . I have a guts feeling, from now on, we will be able to do anything with CSS.

[@zachjensz]

Looks like CSS is better than the real world, parents can start listening to their children

[@gregtasi]

Ohhh

[@Rust_Rust_Rust]

@UCXmwDBryIZrXGeo8_ygETkA As a child 🅵🆄🅲🅺 🆈🅾🆄

[@kalechips22]

I- ok

[@KangJangkrik]

Oh no I choked hot coffee again

[@saiyandeveloper4319]

Can't stop my laughing 😂

[@soviut303]

For anyone wondering why a parent selector like ".child -> .parent" wasn't considered possible. It has to do with the fact that CSS cascades down the hierarchy, never up. Going up the hierarchy would mean you could create infinite loops where a child selects its parent which subsequently selects all its children infinitely; a CSS bomb. Even with safeguards, the selector performance could be easily crippled. The :has selector doesn't break this downward cascade. Instead it just targets an element further up the chain to apply styles, rather than the end of the chain. This makes it predictable, easier to optimize and isn't vulnerable.

[@calyodelphi124]

That actually makes sense

[@timdmackey]

The :has selector is sooo powerful-as you’ve shown, calling it the “parent selector” really doesn’t do it justice! What it really is, is an “ extended family selector”, or simply a “family selector”. So glad to see it finally released!

[@jonathoneng4552]

I’m living in Japan right now and I’ve been motivated to make better Japanese websites because of how bad websites tend to be here. I started learning web development roughly a month ago, so I’m really happy to have found this channel to actually learn css.

[@PandaLaVeraa]

Same, here in Korea, the websites are stuck in 2005 and IE.

[@viniciuschinen1689]

Me too live in Japan as well。

[@aidanzipzap]

Now, that's a reason to make websites that I've never seen.

[@dankierson]

Jonathon, why are sites so plain in Japan? The Tokyo Stock Market site is awful. At least the English language version of it 😁. Maybe languages written horizontally is hard for orientals. But surely good layout is "acultural" ?

[@jonathoneng4552]

@@dankierson from what I can tell, the Japanese devs tend throw as much information as possible to lessen navigation on the user’s end. The issue is that they tend to not care about the user experience. What boggles my mind is how tech savvy one might think Japan is, but in reality most people here just care about the end result as opposed to how to get there. As for the written direction I can attest that for the most part horizontally vs vertically has no impact on things. At least in terms of HTML. Most texts, in general, are actually written in either Left to Right or Top to Bottom, depending on the medium. But what might be a factor is that the Japanese input method allows for different types of displayed Roman characters. For example: English vs.ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ vs. ＥＮＧＬＩＳＨ. The latter two are usually used for specific documents and are often used for names. The problem I see is that instead of writing things in the regular characters we’re used to, they opt for the characters with those spacings, and mess up the design of their websites. Sorry for the long reply btw

[@Juliozz3]

It's amazing how modern CSS enables us to do awesome things with so few lines of code. :has is really a game changer!

[@michaelgleason4791]

I've never been a css guys. It was just a thing I had to use for certain effects in my react apps, and nothing more. I found your channel yesterday and my mind is blown.

[@stevieholland3579]

Right? He give me a live for CSS I never thought I'd have. I would love to be as good at it as Kevin is. Must be fun at that point

[@henrikrosendalvonessen9344]

A pretty cool thing you can do as well, is to target elements based on the amount of content within it using nth selectors, like "div:has(a:nth-of-type(5))" and so on.

[@KevinPowell]

Yeah, I've been playing with that, and with ranges of content, it's really cool!

[@ruleaus7664]

I'm new to CSS, so this is currently too advanced for me. But is it true that more and more specific selectors have to be used as a website gets larger and more complex?

[@itsPenguinBoy]

@@ruleaus7664 nope! You can build something relatively large with basic selectors! However when you do that for long enough you find yourself thinking "is there a way to do X" in CSS or you find yourself wishing you had one more complicated rule instead of 10 simple ones... Then it becomes exciting to use more complicated CSS because of how powerful and efficient it is.

[@MichaelBrown-vq4fd]

@@ruleaus7664 just my thought, but not necessarily. When you become more familiar with CSS and write more code you will start to identify both the challenges and appropriate moments where tightly coupled highly descriptive selectors are advantageous, and when they simply overly complicate your code making future changes / growth difficult. This was one of the hardest things for me to learn personally.

[@danieljohnson5595]

Oh man I've been waiting for this! Best CSS channel on YT, thanks Kevin!

[@thkorkem]

The last one is amazing, man! Thanks a lot for sharing these details with us.

[@jugibur2117]

Wow, a dream come true! Thank you for your extraordinary examples, I would not have suspected these possibilities at first glance.

[@britti73]

Awesome! Can’t wait to use this in production!

[@tonimaunde]

This is going to be clutch for form styling. Thank you, Kevin.

[@AbhinavKulshreshtha]

The image gallery effect, I remember using 10-15 lines of jQuery, and a lot more in vanilla js, to implement that. Can't wait to use :has selector as soon as it is implemented in firefox.

[@SamCrowetheCreativeCrowe]

Keep at it. I am getting better with each video I watch from Kevin Powell! Long live Kevin!

[@Morrile1]

This is fantastic as we can now control the various item within a webpage with much better control, and the downside is waiting for full browser support, yet we can play today.

[@MixbOOsted]

How u r here 1d ago 😶

[@lookupverazhou8599]

@@MixbOOsted Lol.

[@Morrile1]

@@MixbOOsted Assuming from your comments you mean "How can I post before the video is released?" It's one of the advantages of supporting Kevin on Patreon 🙂

[@BobbyCharlz]

Thank you so much for this awesome and inspiring work. It’s got me fired up about CSS again!!!

[@felixadam1126]

Excellent video - Thats NextLevel CSS! Thanks a lot for sharing Kevin.

[@achtube85]

This looks like magic. I am blown away by how intuitive this feels.

[@huseyinlora]

Thanks to your videos, my motivation and recognition of being web developer has changed a lot. You inspire me. Thanks from Turkey.

[@victorvanrijn]

Great content and good examples Kevin, thanks!

[@952a259]

This video helps me a lot! Kevin, thank you very much! 👍

[@stevieholland3579]

Man, you have helped me find the cool side of css. It's like you have the full specs memorized or something. I wish I had the command of css you do. I think the minor frustrations I have are just lack of understanding and you are quickly changing that. Thanks for what you do man.

[@KevinPowell]

It does help that before making a video, specially on a topic I'm not super familiar with (like this one), that I can spend a day or two playing around and making/breaking things and reading through the spec. Makes me look like I know a lot more than I really do 😅

[@stevieholland3579]

@@KevinPowell 🤣 yeah, that does help. Don't sell yourself short though, you crush it dude.

[@binaykumarsahu6657]

I have been waiting for this 😍😍😍 Amazing...

[@sergei_sg]

Wow! It's an effective and incredible way to change styles. I didn't know about it! Thank you!

[@CyberTechBits]

That last demo with the images was totally awesome!

[@NeilMoore]

the image hovering animations at the end of the video really demonstrated the power of this new parent selector feature. 😲I could've used this 10 years ago. I really enjoy your videos. Fantastic job demonstrating the usefuleness of this! 🙂👍

[@maheshcharyindrakanti8544]

This worked incredibly well! I can finally play it thanks

[@dbweb.creative]

Can now do things like this with select tag: #container:has(select > option[value="option1"]:checked) #target { /* do something */ } Basically styling some other element based on selected option.

[@cbhlde]

That's great! Thanks for the info! :)

[@codehal]

Great Videos, Thanks❤

[@mvip4927]

Still working as of today! Thank you!

[@TheMetalMag]

So many great things with css! Thank you

[@melomane01]

Very interesting video, thank you. I designed and built a website using CSS in 2004. I haven’t done any web design since. I’m now tackling a small personal web design project and I’m working on updating my CSS and HTML5 skills. It’s amazing to see CSS evolution in 18 years!

[@vasyaqwe2087]

Thanks for this video Kevin, this is amazing!

[@treebeard2416]

Actually read a blog on webkit website by Jen Simmons about the :has pseudo-class and now having your video helps in both visualizing and retaining its implementation. Thank you so much Kevin!

[@fathercashew]

Well you earned yourself a subscriber. This was great info and really well presented. Thank you.

[@robynbieber6312]

I am so excited for this!!!

[@fiveeyes2802]

Bravo! This was awesome!

[@chemedev]

Last example is impressive, what a creative mind you have!

[@ReddishReddish]

Holy moly that last example was totally mind blowing! 🤯

[@lfernandorg]

So interesting, I didn't think of that, thanks for sharing!

[@rproctor83]

Very interesting, this will make a lot of things much easier and alleviate the need for JS in a lot of ways. Can't wait!

[@avi7278]

I think this is the first ever video about CSS that I've watched with interest 😆

[@wdsenjoyer9960]

Last example was mind-blowing!

[@givenlyngkhoi107]

Hey! Thanks so much for this video!

[@fredhair]

I think that not has makes more sense than has not. In most modern programming languages the logical or binary negation is placed directly before the expression so it makes sense to me that this does it in the same way. Awesome video though, I can't wait to start using this and to see what people are going to do with it!!

[@webstarigt8940]

Love everything. Keep it buddy!

[@wendanny6732]

Thank you Kevin this is really helpful and interesting to play around

[@chimadivine7715]

Many times I wished CSS had a parent selector instead of having to do it with JavaScript via the .parentElement or .closest(...) Kevin made me realise that my prayer has been answered. Your videos are golden. Much thanks!

[@ErzengelDesLichtes]

I wish I had this a decade ago when I was making webpages for a living. I know there’s a few places it would have been useful. I had to work around it by having the ASP put classes on the parents based on the children. This of course meant I had to preprocess the children. Letting the CSS handle it (where the HTML has already been built!) would be so nice.

[@RandolfRichardson]

Thanks! This is a very useful feature.

[@qoo25244547]

Thanks for sharing. It's really amazing!

[@stevenirby5576]

I've written CSS since the 2000s and I have ALWAYS wanted this!!! So pumped for this.

[@haruruben]

Great looking forward to being able to use this in production 5-10 years from now

[@jenstornell]

I actually used this video as inspiration in one of my projects. I'll try to explain what I did. I used :has to select all the elements with a class name of the same name as the element that I'm hovering. I don't think it could be done without it because sibling selectors can't walk up the tree. It's a bit similar to your gallery but in reverse. I used it to highlight texts of the same type in order to change them at the same time (with js). The more you can do without JS the better and in this case CSS takes a bit of the JS part which is nice. :has is awesome.

[@neoqueto]

:has with :hover or :active or whatever gives you SUPERPOWERS.

[@loupthevenin8176]

Man, that last example did in 5 minutes what I struggled to do in a week using javascript (which I had no experience with at the time) 😅 Such an amazing improvement for CSS-only interactive projects !

[@agentbey]

This is next level. Very impressive exploration.

[@sovereignlivingsoul]

excellent timing on this video Kevin, thank you, i am designing a new website where using has() will come in very handy with selecting components with similar styling.

[@lorenzo3131]

30 seconds into the video, I paused it and head straight to the caniuse website. Still not fully supported, but this will definitely change how we do CSS!

[@MrMelquize]

Amazing work, thank you

[@TheRalic]

First time watching your vides and instant subscribe 😊 great video!

[@KevinPowell]

Welcome aboard!

[@m12652]

Excellent as usual thank you…. And ps…. An example that describes something in a perfectly understandable way is never useless :)

[@shahfaisal3923]

Really more than awesome. Thanks Kevin for this amazing tutorial. Love from Afghanistan.

[@thomasj4370]

Thanks! This has( ) helped me.

[@Dyanosis]

Having "hasNot" would break consistency for :not. Because you have things like ":not(:empty)", but you don't have a ":notEmpty". It makes sense from a coding point of view to keep it consistent. Also, your example for the "we can check if it has a direct sibling"... but there's already a selector pattern for that. It's also surprising how long it's taken for this change to finally be here. Parents able to be styled based on children... finally.

[@benvindadossantos2092]

This is super, thank you

[@sbkates]

That gallery effect is gorgeous, and I'm so glad to not need JS or super complex CSS for it.

[@GeekIWG]

YES! I've wanted this feature in CSS for sooo long!

[@GeekIWG]

The reply above is a scammer. Please don't contact him. Report it as spam.

[@noskillzdad5504]

Honestly, your videos are taking me from "I need to find how to solve this problem" to "f... I want to try this myself. Let me see where I can use it"

[@clethcriss6258]

When you were adding background/colors to the divs, I was thinking about rebeccapurple... then you used it.

[@Daidera91]

Kevin you make really amazing content!

[@shaderone07]

Super cool..especially the last one 😀

[@jacekmaka403]

Thank you so much! !!

[@sacredgeometry]

Cool! That's so useful.

[@jonathanhammond5563]

Great job once again Kevin

[@StrikerFeed]

I'm so excited! I already see at least one cool use case of :has - much more convenient custom checkboxes or radios. For now you can implement them by placing label after input, defining ids, and in css use "input:checked + label" selector. With :has you can implement that by placing input inside a label so it doesn't need to have an id! In conclusion, applying styles to the element's parent by triggering element itself - game changer, and finally it's here.

[@GilGoldshlager]

WOW! wonderful! 🙌👏

[@realdragon]

Me who knows nothing about CSS: It's amazing, this changes everything

[@trappedcat3615]

CSS is now officially a programming language

[@tom7050]

it is , since --var .

[@trappedcat3615]

@@tom7050 can't control procedures with var

[@dave6012]

That image gallery was nice 👌

[@wfl-junior]

I was wondering why that image border example, but then what came next was mind blowing.

[@willofirony]

Isn't this a great channel? [if you're stuck on that one: the answer is yes indeed.] You do have the gift of making CSS seem exciting. Thank you Kevin.

[@maximilianoInfinito]

Awesome! thankyou

[@alancordwell9759]

Hi Kevin, new subscriber here. What an awesome channel, as a professional web app developer this is an absolute must! Great information very well presented, thanks.

[@authorspirit]

Thanks for this.

[@joshreynolds4164]

God this was a brilliant video. Mind blown at that last example

[@xbsidesx]

What a fun video. Thanks for sharing it. As a little side note you have a mistake in edit around 8:51 until 9:05 or something, that you repeat the content. It happened before in the video, but I'm sure you seen it. I certainly don't mind them but I thought you might.

[@Sashad2003]

Thank you for good tutorial 👍

[@davidgwyer5169]

Really nice examples of using :has. Thank you for the walkthrough. I played around with example three and you can also do away with the :not selector (maybe a little cleaner?): .article__title { color: hsl(250 75% 80%); margin: 0; margin-block-end: 5rem; } .article__subtitle { margin: 0; font-size: 1.75rem; font-weight: 600; margin-block-end: 5rem; } .article__title:has(+ .article__subtitle) { color: lime; margin-block-end: 0rem; }

[@smohammadhn]

Last one was out of this world 👌

[@amjedh7133]

am learning a lot from ur video thnx for the effort

[@bruhmoment3731]

Brilliant!

[@GyroCannon]

"It couldn't be done" Yes, it was in 2022 that browser developers finally discovered tree traversal from the bottom up. (At least, that's what is likely going on under the hood) (Snideness aside, I'm super excited to use this!)

[@nigh_anxiety]

Great video, thanks. I'm not seeing the video about combinators linked in the description as mentioned at 8:05. I found your previous videos on combinators from 2018; is there a more recent one?

[@x-Mick-x]

So good!!

[@jez9999]

I noticed this just a few weeks before Chrome enabled it in mainline. Been wanting something like it for years. Probably the best CSS pseudo-class ever.

[@spencerkeene]

The :not:has combination doesn’t really bother me. I read it as “does not have” and :has:not I read as “has something that is not”. That makes it clear to me what it actually selects.

[@KevinPowell]

I always do it backward the first time, lol. I'm sure I'll get used to it though.

[@leisti]

:not(:has(:has-not))

[@re-member]

Thank you!

[@davidfoster6433]

Well Done.. Very Interesting.