Conditional Styles with CSS :has

I was setting up a simple landing page for Fandwagon and just wanted some text to be strike-through when the user checks a checkbox. So far my landing page has no need for any JavaScript, and thankfully I can keep it that way and still get conditional styles with the :has() pseudo-class.

Demo

Code

First, the HTML - a simple form with a checkbox.

<form>
  <p>
    Want to know when it's ready?
    <span
      >I'll send you one email when it's ready, then delete your email address
      forever.</span
    >
  </p>
  <div>
    <input type="checkbox" switch name="subscribe" id="subscribe" />
    <label for="subscribe">Check this box to subscribe to updates</label>
  </div>
</form>

And the CSS for the conditional strike-through

#example-form:has(input:checked) span {
  text-decoration: line-through;
}

Breaking down the selector

The first part #example-form:has(input:checked) is basically saying "find the element with id of example-form that has a child input element that is checked".

:has is basically a very-flexible "parent selector".

Once we've selected the parent that contains the checked input then we select the descendent span element and apply the text-decoration: line-through style.

💥 Done! No JavaScript needed!

You can get pretty far in conditional styling by combining :has and :checked pseudo-classes. If you have any cool example of combining the two then send me an email, I'd love to see!