9.9. Cascading and Inheritance

The "C" in CSS stands for "cascading". Until now, we haven't dealt with any aspect of CSS that required an understanding of that term. Now that we're dealing with relatively complex display-related issues, however, the time has come to spend some serious time with this topic.

Cascading is not confined to text components, objects, and elements. It applies across the board to CSS usage on a Web page. The reason it is often discussed in conjunction with textual elements is because its impact is most apparent and most easily demonstrable in this context.

Inheritance is related to cascading in terms of its impact, but the two terms have quite different meanings.

Cascading addresses the question of how any given element ...

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