What Does Inherit Mean in CSS

What does inherit mean in CSS?

inherit means simply that the style will be inherited from the element's parent. For example:

jsFiddle

HTML

<div class="blue">
    <div class="inherit">I also have a blue background!</div>
</div>

CSS

.blue { background: blue; }
.inherit { background: inherit; }

Using inherit on background will normally not do you much good however, and normally produce the same as the default of a transparent background would. The above example adds nothing really, it puts a blue background on top of a blue background, the main purpose of inherit is for use in certain default values like with color and font-size.

What does the inherit keyword in CSS do?

It will use the same value as the same property its parent has.

body {
   margin: 234px;
}
h1 {
   margin: inherit; /* this equals 234px in this instance */
}

<body>
   <h1></h1>
</body>

If there are multiple instances of <h1> in the file, it will take the margin of its parent, so 234px is not always the value it will have. For example:

<body>
    <h2></h2>
    <div>
        <h2></h2>
    </div>
</body>

body {
    margin: 20px;
}
div {
    margin: 30px;
}
h2 {
    margin: inherit; /* 20px if parent is <body>; 30px if parent is <div> */
}

What's the difference between CSS inherit and initial?

The initial value given in the summary of the definition of each CSS property has different meaning for inherited and non-inherited properties.

For inherited properties, the initial value is used, for the root element only, when no value is specified for the element.

For non-inherited properties the initial value is used, for any element, when no value is specified for the element.

An initial keyword is being added in CSS3 to allow authors to explicitly specify this initial value.

The inherit keyword means use whatever value is assigned to my parent.

Source : https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/initial_value

What is the purpose of using font: inherit?

Like the other answers have said, it’s to inherit a CSS property from the parent element.

What the other answers have failed to say is why you’d need this. Because, after all, CSS properties are inherited anyway, right?

Well, no. Most are, by default (but link colour isn’t inherited from the parent element, for instance). But consider this case:

p { color: blue; }

div.important { color: red; }

<div class="important">
    <p>This is a text</p>
</div>

Now the text will be blue, not red. If we want the <p> to have its parent’s styling rather than its default styling, we have to override its CSS. We could of course repeat the property value (red) but that violates DRY (don’t repeat yourself). Instead, we inherit it:

div.important p { color: inherit; }

How to make an element inherit a set of CSS rules for another element?

The easiest is to add your someInheritedDiv element to the first rule like this.

div.someBaseDiv,
#someInheritedDiv
{
    margin-top:3px;
    margin-left:auto;
    margin-right:auto;
    margin-bottom:0px;
}

This will tell your #someInheritedDiv to apply the same styles as div.someBaseDiv has. Then you extend this set of styles with more specific to your #someInheritedDiv:

#someInheritedDiv
{
    background-image:url("images/worldsource/customBackground.gif");
    background-repeat:no-repeat;
    width:950px;
    height:572px;
}

This is how specificity in CSS works.

What does this documentation syntax mean in MDN for : inherit css tag

From MDN

The inherit CSS keyword causes the element to take the computed value
of the property from its parent element. It can be applied to any CSS
property, including the CSS shorthand property all.

CSS height: 100% vs height: inherit

height: 100% will match the height of the element's parent, regardless of the parent's height value.

height: inherit will, as the name implies, inherit the value from it's parent. If the parent's value is height: 50%, then the child will also be 50% of the height of it's parent. If the parent's size is defined in absolute values (e.g. height: 50px), then height: inherit and height: 100% will have the same behaviour for the child.

In CSS, what is the difference between cascading and inheritance?

Inheritance is about how properties trickle down from an element to its children. Certain properties, like font-family inherit. If you set a font-family on the body, that font family will be inherited by all the elements within the body. The same is true for color, but it is not true for background or height which will always default to transparent and auto. In most cases this just makes sense. Why would the background inherit? That would be a pain. What if fonts didn't inherit? What would that even look like?

The cascade is about what take precedence when there is a conflict. The rules of the cascade include:

Later properties override earlier properties
More specific selectors override less specific selectors
Specified properties override inherited properties

And so on. The cascade solves any conflict situations. It is the order in which properties are applied.

(update) Specificity is the calculation used to determine selector priority in the cascade. When two selectors apply to the same element, the one with higher specificity takes precedence.

Inline styles have a very high specificity (1000)
ID's have a specificity of 100
classes/attributes and pseudo-classes add 10
elements and pseudo-elements add 1

Add up all the parts in a selector chain to determine the total specificity. In case of a tie, the last selector takes precedence.

Of course, that comes with various edge-cases and caveats. One class will always override plain elements, no matter how many. More targeted selectors are given priority over inherited properties from parent selectors. And you can throw out all your calculations if someone used !important — that trumps everything.

What Does Inherit Mean in CSS