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Discussion on: Reasons not to use IDs in CSS

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jrock2004 profile image
John Costanzo

Where I use ID's in my CSS is if I want to support themes. This makes it easier to override colors and such.

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clairecodes profile image
Claire Parker-Jones

That's a good idea - you can easily override existing class styles that way.

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moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair

Where I work, we use IDs for CMS content where our front end devs used to use style scoped to attach styles to customisations on elements, in preference to making a bunch of inline styles.

We use them in styling only because they're sometimes the only hooks we have from third-party modules or legacy CMS systems. This means that the CSS has a bunch of IDs in it already, and when a new developer starts, they tend to continue using them. I think wherever we do anything from scratch we use classes for everything style-related and data attributes for everything script-related.

Personally I'd prefer to use type selectors and document hierarchy first and classes second, but my voice is very small and hard to hear!