A Super Weird CSS Bug That Affects Text Selection

::-moz-selection {
}
::selection {
}

Celý článek

You know how you can style (to some degree) selected text with ::selection? Well, Jeff Starr uncovered a heck of a weird CSS bug.

If you:

1. Leave that selector empty
2. Link it from an external stylesheet (rather than <style> block)

Selecting text will have no style at all. 😳😬😕

In other words, if you <link rel="stylesheet" ...> up some CSS that includes these empty selectors:

::-moz-selection {
}
::selection {
}

Then text appears to be un-selectable. You actually can still select the text, so it's a bit like you did ::selection { background: transparent; } rather than user-select: none;.

The fact that it behaves that way in most browsers (Safari being a lone exception) makes it seems like that's how it is specced, but I'm calling it a bug. A selector with zero properties in it should essentially be ignored, rather than doing something so heavy-handed.

Jeff made a demo. I did as well to confirm it.

See the Pen
Invisible Text Selection Bug by Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier)
on CodePen.

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