--- title: Before Selector --- ## Before Selector The CSS **::before** selector can be used to insert anything before the content an element or elements. It allows the designer perform any css design before the content in an element. It is used by attaching **::before** to an the element it is to be used on. Let's look at some examples: ```css p::before { content: ""; border: solid 5px #ccc } span.comment::before{ content: "Comment: "; color: blue; } ``` ```html
To infinity and beyond
I am buz lightyear, I come in peace.
May the force be with youworld!!
``` This will show `Hello world!!` in the page. Not only strings, also images, counters or even nothing ("", useful for clearfix) can be inserted into the `content` attibute, but not HTML. There are a good number of cool things that can be made using ```::before``` and ```after``` in a creative way. You can take a look in the next link if you are curious: A Whole Bunch of Amazing Stuff Pseudo Elements Can Do #### Single-colon vs. Double-colon There's a bit of discussion about the right way of using pseudo-elements: old style single-colon (```:before```), used in CSS specifications 1 and 2, versus CSS3 recomendation, double-colon (```::before```), mainly to "establish a discrimination between pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements". But for compatibility reasons, single-colon is still accepted. Talking about compatibility, IE8 supports the single-colon notation only. #### More Information: W3Schools CSS Pseudo-elements CSS-Tricks ::after/::before Selecting and manipulating CSS pseudo-elements such as ::before and ::after using jQuery