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htmlcssformscss-selectorshtml-input

CSS selector for text input fields?

How can I target input fields of type 'text' using CSS selectors?

Solution 
  • input[type=text]

    or, to restrict to text inputs inside forms

    form input[type=text]

    or, to restrict further to a certain form, assuming it has id myForm

    #myForm input[type=text]

    Notice: This is not supported by IE6, so if you want to develop for IE6 either use IE7.js (as Yi Jiang suggested) or start adding classes to all your text inputs.

    Reference: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/selector.html#attribute-selectors

    Because it is specified that default attribute values may not always be selectable with attribute selectors, one could try to cover other cases of markup for which text inputs are rendered:

    input:not([type]), /* type attribute not present in markup */
input[type=""],    /* type attribute present, but empty    */
input[type=text]   /* type is explicitly defined as 'text' */

    Still this leaves the case when the type is defined, but has an invalid value and that still falls back to type="text". To cover that we could use select all inputs that are not one of the other known types

    input:not([type=button]):not([type=password]):not([type=submit])...

    But this selector would be quite ridiculous and also the list of possible types is growing with new features being added to HTML.

    Notice: the :not pseudo-class is only supported starting with IE9.