How do I select an element that has a certain class?

Solution 1:

It should be this way:

h2.myClass looks for h2 with class myClass. But you actually want to apply style for h2 inside .myClass so you can use descendant selector .myClass h2.

h2 {
    color: red;
}

.myClass {
    color: green;
}

.myClass h2 {
    color: blue;
}

Demo

This ref will give you some basic idea about the selectors and have a look at descendant selectors

Solution 2:

h2.myClass refers to all h2 with class="myClass".

.myClass h2 refers to all h2 that are children of (i.e. nested in) elements with class="myClass".

If you want the h2 in your HTML to appear blue, change the CSS to the following:

.myClass h2 {
    color: blue;
}

If you want to be able to reference that h2 by a class rather than its tag, you should leave the CSS as it is and give the h2 a class in the HTML:

<h2 class="myClass">This header should be BLUE to match the element.class selector</h2>

Solution 3:

The element.class selector is for styling situations such as this:

<span class="large"> </span>
<p class="large"> </p>

.large {
    font-size:150%; font-weight:bold;
}

p.large {
    color:blue;
}

Both your span and p will be assigned the font-size and font-weight from .large, but the color blue will only be assigned to p.

As others have pointed out, what you're working with is descendant selectors.

Solution 4:

h2.myClass is only valid for h2 elements which got the class myClass directly assigned.

Your want to note it like this:

.myClass h2

Which selects all children of myClass which have the tagname h2