CSS Which Takes Precedence, Inline or the Class

CSS which takes precedence, inline or the class?

Generally speaking we can say that all the styles will "cascade" into a new "virtual" style sheet by the following rules, where number three has the highest priority:

1. Browser default
2. Embedded and external stylesheets. Later has precedence over earlier. There IS NOT any inherent difference between embedded and external.
3. Inline style (inside an HTML element)

Source (Edit: of original incorrect information, since corrected both here and there): w3schools

W3schools explains a lot about CSS and also goes through and shows examples of most things you can do with CSS. Always a good resource if you have questions about something. (Edit: debatable, they were the source of the original wrong answer.)

What is the order of precedence for CSS?

There are several rules ( applied in this order ) :

1. inline css ( html style attribute ) overrides css rules in style tag and css file
2. a more specific selector takes precedence over a less specific one
3. rules that appear later in the code override earlier rules if both have the same specificity.
4. A css rule with !important always takes precedence.

In your case its rule 3 that applies.

Specificity for single selectors from highest to lowest:

• ids (example: #main selects <div id="main">)
• classes (ex.: .myclass), attribute selectors (ex.: [href=^https:]) and pseudo-classes (ex.: :hover)
• elements (ex.: div) and pseudo-elements (ex.: ::before)

To compare the specificity of two combined selectors, compare the number of occurences of single selectors of each of the specificity groups above.

Example: compare #nav ul li a:hover to #nav ul li.active a::after

• count the number of id selectors: there is one for each (#nav)
• count the number of class selectors: there is one for each (:hover and .active)
• count the number of element selectors: there are 3 (ul li a) for the first and 4 for the second (ul li a ::after), thus the second combined selector is more specific.

A good article about css selector specificity.

CSS precedence

As others have mentioned, you have a specificity problem. When determining which of two rules should take precedence, the CSS engine counts the number of #ids in each selector. If one has more than the other, it's used. Otherwise, it continues comparing .classes and tags in the same way. Here, you have a class on the stylesheet rule, but not on the inline rule, so the stylesheet takes precedence.

You can override this with !important, but that's an awfully big hammer to be using here. You're better off improving the specificity of your inline rule. Based on your description, it sounds like your .rightColumn element either is or contains a table and you'd like the cells in that table to have extra spacing? If so, the selector you're looking for is ".rightColumn td", which is more specific than the stylesheet rule and will take precedence.

Will inline-styling take precedence over a media query?

When you define inline style then it is available for all devices and any set of media queries you write.

And inline style has the highest precedence so in your case styling displayed will be having inline styles.

In case you want to override inline styles then you need to add styles in your media queries using !important.

For reference - CSS Specificity

CSS Specificity - Internal vs inline vs external style

No, internal does not take over inline. Inline styles are always the highest priority. From Mozilla Docs:

Inline styles added to an element (e.g., style="font-weight: bold;") always overwrite any styles in external stylesheets, and thus can be thought of as having the highest specificity.

These "external stylesheets" also include style tags in the head or body. See for yourself:

p {  color: red;}

<style>  p {    color: red;  }</style>
<p style="color: blue">  Hello!</p>
<style>  p {    color: red;  }</style>

<link rel="old stylesheet" href="path/to/style.css" />
<link rel="newer stylesheet" href="path/to/style.css" />
<link rel="newest stylesheet" href="path/to/style.css" />

.myclass{
   color : red !important;
}

.action_link_2 {
    display:inline-block;
}

body .display_none {
    display:none;
}