Changing a CSS rule-set from Javascript

You can, but it's rather cumbersome. The best reference on how to do it is the following article: Totally Pwn CSS with Javascript (web archive link).

I managed to get it to work with Firefox and IE - I couldn't in Chrome, though it appears that it supports the DOM methods.ricosrealm reports that it works in Chrome, too.

This is a modern version based on Totally Pwn CSS with Javascript. It's ES6 I hope don't mind.

function getCSSRule(ruleName) {
    ruleName = ruleName.toLowerCase();
    var result = null;
    var find = Array.prototype.find;

    find.call(document.styleSheets, styleSheet => {
        result = find.call(styleSheet.cssRules, cssRule => {
            return cssRule instanceof CSSStyleRule 
                && cssRule.selectorText.toLowerCase() == ruleName;
        });
        return result != null;
    });
    return result;
}

This function returns a CSSStyleRule that you can use like this:

var header = getCSSRule('#header');
header.style.backgroundColor = 'red';

Also document.styleSheets list references of the CSSStylesSheets Objects. Other way to acces a specific sytleSheet in the page is by assigning an id to the style or link element in the html code, and get it in javascript using document.getElementById('my-style').sheet. This are some useful methods:

Major Browsers and IE9+ : insertRule(), deleteRule(), removeProperty().

Major Browsers, Firefox? and IE9+ : setProperty().

<stye id="my-style" ...
....
var myStyle = document.getElementById('my-style').sheet
myStyle.insertRule('#header { background: red; }', 0);

It is also possible to dynamically create a new style element to store dynamic created styles, I think should be way to avoid conflicts.

You can edit CLASS in document styleshets as follows

[...document.styleSheets[0].cssRules].find(x=> x.selectorText=='.box')
     .style.background= 'red';

function edit() {
  [...document.styleSheets[0].cssRules].find(x=> x.selectorText=='.box')
    .style.background= 'red';
}

.box {
  margin: 10px;
  padding: 10px;
  background: yellow;
}

<button onclick="edit()" >Click me</button>
<div class="box" >My box 1</div>
<div class="box" >My box 2</div>
<div class="box" >My box 3</div>

I tried the code via link from @alex-gyoshev comment, but it dosn't work

1. it fails on the CSS rules with Google fonts in Chrome
2. it fails on FireFox security checks

So I changed it slightly, but deleted delete functionality since it wasn't needed for me. Checked in IE 11, FireFox 32, Chrome 37 and Opera 26.

function getCSSRule(ruleName) { // Return requested style object
  ruleName = ruleName.toLowerCase(); // Convert test string to lower case.
  var styleSheet;
  var i, ii;
  var cssRule = false; // Initialize cssRule. 
  var cssRules;
  if (document.styleSheets) { // If browser can play with stylesheets
    for (i = 0; i < document.styleSheets.length; i++) { // For each stylesheet
      styleSheet = document.styleSheets[i];
      if (!styleSheet.href) {
        if (styleSheet.cssRules) { // Browser uses cssRules?
          cssRules = styleSheet.cssRules; // Yes --Mozilla Style
        } else { // Browser usses rules?
          cssRules = styleSheet.rules; // Yes IE style. 
        } // End IE check.
        if (cssRules) {
          for (ii = 0; ii < cssRules.length; ii++) {
            cssRule = cssRules[ii];
            if (cssRule) { // If we found a rule...
              // console.log(cssRule);
              if (cssRule.selectorText) {
                console.log(cssRule.selectorText);
                if (cssRule.selectorText.toLowerCase() == ruleName) { //  match ruleName?
                  return cssRule; // return the style object.
                }
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
  return false; // we found NOTHING!
}

The APIs for editing stylesheets with JS are, sadly, not consistent across browsers. The YUI Stylesheet Utility attempts to smooth over these differences so you could just use that. You could also look at the source code to figure out how it works if you don't want to use YUI itself.