What are the '*' and '_' prefixes in css?

Question

Just stumbled upon this in a borrowed css file - something I've never noticed before, and punctuation in context is inherently hard to google:

.ez-radio { zoom: 1; *display:inline; _height:15px; }

What's the '*' prefix do?

And for the matter the underscore in _height?

Is this some new CSS3 trickery?

Have a look [here](http://www.javascriptkit.com/dhtmltutors/csshacks3.shtml). — sloth, Oct 09 '12 at 09:13

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 09 '12 at 09:11

10

It's used for CSS hacks in Internet Explorer.

* is IE 6 - 7 only (thank you, mck89!)

_ is IE 6 and below.

Don't use them. If you need browser specific CSS definitions, use specialized CSS definitions instead.

answered Oct 09 '12 at 09:11

Leonard

Thanks for the answers. Makes sense, and since people who use IE7 or less can eat my shorts, I'll be deleting them :) – jenson-button-event Oct 09 '12 at 09:24

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 09 '12 at 09:12

1

Those symbols are used to target IE lower version browsers called it CSS HACKS. FF, Chrome or Safari always ignored those strings in CSS class.

answered Oct 09 '12 at 09:12

Sudip Pal

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 09 '12 at 09:16

0

dont want to duplicate Zanathel's answer, but its important to mention:

please do not use them in your stylesheet, keep it hack-free
when you need to use hacks, dont use hacks, use conditional comments, and place your ie specific css in these files

answered Oct 09 '12 at 09:16

Mark

3 Answers3