Manual:Interface/Stylesheets

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MediaWiki:Common.css is a Cascading Style Sheet loaded after the active Skin's stylesheet. This stylesheet is loaded with all skins and a similar stylesheet specific to the skin – named "MediaWiki:skinname.css" – is appended to it (see below). Although only Monobook.css is listed on Special:AllMessages, the other skin-specific stylesheets will work nonetheless.

If $wgAllowUserCss is set to true, users can customize the interface for themselves only by creating user subpages with lowercase titles (see below).

Global stylesheets won't load on special restricted pages like login or preferences, unless you enable $wgAllowSiteCSSOnRestrictedPages .

They also won't load if safemode is used.

List of stylesheets

Global stylesheets

These are stylesheets that affect all users of the wiki, depending on their setup — what skin they use, their user group, etc.

MediaWiki:Common.css - all skins and all the users, except for the MobileFrontend
MediaWiki:skinname.css - per skin, skinname is the value of that variable in the PHP file of your skin, for example MediaWiki:Vector.css, MediaWiki:Monobook.css
User group CSS - per user group, for example MediaWiki:Group-sysop.css
MediaWiki:Noscript.css - for users viewing without JavaScript; may be replaced with a body.client-nojs selector
MediaWiki:Print.css - for "printable versions" of pages
MediaWiki:Mobile.css - for Mobile themes, used with Extension:MobileFrontend
MediaWiki:Filepage.css - specifically targeted to have Commons file pages (foreign repositories) work on 'local' file pages.
MediaWiki:Apioutput.css - for the web (not JSON) results of API queries

Personal stylesheets

These are stylesheets that only yourself and users with the editusercss right, usually interface admins, can edit.

User:Example/common.css - all skins – introduced in MW v1.17
User:Example/skinname.css - per skin, for example User:Example/vector.css and User:Example/monobook.css
User:Example/global.css - per wiki family, if Extension:GlobalCssJs is in use in for this family

In the case of conflicting style settings for a piece of content, the resulting setting depends primarily on specificity. For two rules of the same specificity, it depends on order between and within stylesheets: the last wins. See also cascading order. The order can be overriden with the indication "!important", but this should generally be avoided.

CSS selectors

In the Monobook skin, the CSS selectors relevant for the style of the page body include the following. As far as possible, examples are given, which show the result for the current style settings:

:link – unvisited link – example: help:index ; default: help:index
:visited – visited link
:link#contentTop
:link.external – http://example ; default: http://example
:link.extiw – interwiki link in page body – ; default: en:example ^[1]
:link.image – link from full image to image description page
:link.internal – link to file itself (Media:), and links from thumbnail and magnifying glass icon to image description page (note that color and font size specified for a.internal are only applicable in the first case) – Media:example.png
:link.new – doesnotexist ; default: doesnotexist
.allpagesredirect – abc – redirects in Special:Allpages and Special:Prefixindex
body.ns-0, ..., body.ns-15 (namespaces)
div#bodyContent
div#column-content
div#editsection
div#globalWrapper
div#tocindent
div.tocline
h1.firstHeading
h2
h3
small – example
table.toc
:link and :visited – It's a common mistake to use "a" instead of ":link" or ":visited" to style links (unvisited and visited, respectively). Whereas later pseudoclasses apply only to links, "a" applies to both links and named anchors (e.g. <a name="bookmark">).

#p-lang a – for interlanguage links

One may also have the style depend on the value of an attribute, e.g. with the selectors:

:link[title = "User:username"]}}
link[title = "pagename"]}}
link[href = "full url "]}}

to color-code or highlight particular users (including oneself) and/or links to particular pages (like the bolding of watched pages on Recent Changes).

See also Help:Watching pages#CSS

The watchlist and Recent Changes use two classes:

.autocomment
example
.new (see below)

The page history has classes autocomment and:

.user
.minor

Thus the font specified for user applies in the page history, but not in the watchlist or Recent Changes.

Edit page

Edit box: textarea#wpTextbox1

example1

Edit summary box: input#wpSummary

example2

Non-display

One extreme "style" for a text is "display:none;", i.e., not displaying it, e.g.

pqr gives pr

To allow a text to optionally have this style, specify a class or id for it; a user who wants to hide it can then correspondingly specify in their personal CSS:

.classname {display: none;} or #id {display: none;}

Non-displayed links do not work, as opposed to links in a very small font, compare:

p[[q]]r gives pr

p[[q]]r gives pqr

It cannot be used to remove text in expressions for template names, parameter names, parameter values, page names in links, etc.

While "display: none;" produces nothing, "visibility: hidden;" produces blank spaces replacing the content; its opposite is "visibility: visible;".

Example:

pqr gives pqr

Try inspecting the page with the Developer tools probably provided with your browser to find the hidden element.

If you would like to view the hidden text, you could use an add-on for your browser. For example, the Web Developer add-on is available for Firefox and Chrome. You could add it to your browser and then choose Misc. -> Display Hidden Elements in that toolbar, to make all hidden elements appear.

Non-print

One can exclude content from being printed (if the browser supports CSS) by declaring the content to be of the "noprint" class:

<div class="someclass noprint">This will not appear in the print version.</div>

Style depending on a parameter or variable

Variable class or ID

A class or ID can depend on the result produced by a template or on a template parameter, e.g., class="abc{{{1|def}}}". For one or more of the possible class names, the style of that class can be defined. If the class is undefined it is ignored, so the standard style is used.

In the simplest case, we have e.g., class="abc{{{1}}}" and define class abcdef. If the parameter value is "def", it applies.

If a page for general use only makes sense when styles are defined for certain classes, then these have to be specified in the page MediaWiki:Common.css, which applies for all users and all skins, as far as not overridden.

Variable style parameter value

Wikitext like

<span style="display:{{{3|none}}}">Wed</span>

displays "Wed" if parameter 3 is defined, but its value is not "none", and displays nothing if parameter 3 is undefined or "none". If the value of parameter 3 is a display style other than "none", that style is applied.