How do CSS custom properties cascade?

Question

Let's say I have following CSS :

:root { --color: blue; }
div { --color: green; }
#alert { --color: red; }
* { color: var(--color); }

and my markup is :

<p>I inherited blue from the root element!</p>
<div>I got green set directly on me!</div>
<div id="alert">
  While I got red set directly on me!
  <p>I’m red too, because of inheritance!</p>
</div>

My question is Does the CSS above translate to :

body {
  color: blue;
}
div {
  color: green;
}
#alert{
  color: red;
}

or is there an additional

* {
  color: red;
}

Without variables the universal selector applies the same CSS on all elements. Does this change and the styling becomes dependent on elements?

One more question I have is if :root translates to body in CSS.

Here is a CodePen demo : http://codepen.io/anon/pen/RrvLJQ

Answer 1

As you've correctly stated in your title, custom properties cascade. In fact, this is why the module is called CSS Custom Properties for Cascading Variables. That means your custom property --color is evaluated as-is per element, just as with any other CSS property. In terms of the actual styles that are applied to your elements, what you really only have is:

* {
  color: var(--color);
}

The var(--color) value is then evaluated for each element based on how the --color property cascades. So it follows that:

• The body element has a blue foreground.
• Any div elements have a green foreground.
• The element whose ID is "alert" has a red foreground.
• Because you don't have a --color definition for *, it's inherited by default. Therefore all other elements inherit --color from their parent element: body > p inherits from body, becoming blue, and #alert > p inherits from #alert, becoming red.

If you really do want to express the cascaded values in terms of CSS, you could say that it translates to the following:

:root {
  color: blue;
}
div {
  color: green;
}
#alert {
  color: red;
}
* {
  color: inherit;
}

But only because the original CSS contains an explicit * { color: var(--color); } definition which ensures that every element's color maps to --color.

Note also that the code that you have comes from an example within the spec, which itself is described as follows:

If a custom property is declared multiple times, the standard cascade rules help resolve it. Variables always draw from the computed value of the associated custom property on the same element

---

One more question I have is if :root translates to body in CSS.

1. :root doesn't translate to any element in CSS, because CSS is document language-agnostic.
2. :root doesn't translate to body in HTML; it corresponds to html.