Is there a way of selecting the last item of a list with CSS?

Question

Say I have a list as follows:

• item1
• item2
• item3

Is there a CSS selector that will allow me to directly select the last item of a list? In this case item 3.

Cheers!

Answer 1

Not that i'm aware of. The traditional solution is to tag the first & last items with class="first" & class="last" so you can identify them.

The CSS psudo-class first-child will get you the first item but not all browsers support it. CSS3 will have last-child too (this is currently supported by Firefox, Safari but not IE 6/7/beta 8)

Answer 2

Until it's properly supported, you'll need to add a class to 'last' items, as suggested. You don't have to do this manually, though. If you can take a javascript hit, take a look at either:

• the jQuery :last-child selector
• Keeping Your Elements’ Kids in Line with Offspring (a list apart article by Alex Bischoff), a specific, lighter-weight method

Either will avoid 'polluting' your markup, and are perfectly acceptable if your style is a 'nice addition' as opposed to a 'must have' design feature.