CSS Mnemonics: How do you remember whether # or . is for class or id?

#test is the selector for id="test"

.test is the selector开发者_开发技巧 for class="test"

but how do you remember which way round they are (eg not .=id)

Well, in truth these things are so common that most people don't need mnemonics to remember them, but here's something I came up with, if it helps:

In terms of a filename a . and then an extension denotes a type of thing. There can be many different things of this type. With CSS, using classes you can denote a single style for many elements of the same type.

In terms of a URL, a # denotes an anchor link to a specific spot in the document. It refers to one location only. With CSS, using IDs you denote a single style for a single specific element.

If a police officer catches you with "hash," he will ask to see your ID. If not you get to stay classy. It's really dumb, but that's how I remember.

• CallerID shows a phone #.
• Periods are round like pearls, and-- Pearls are classy.

(P.S.: What's with all the "you learn differently than me, so you suck" comments? Goodness. Repetition is OK for me, but if I can visualize something I pick things up more quickly. In fact, the weirder something is the easier it is to memorize!)

I learned it the same way I learned that quotes (rather than parentheses) are used for attributes' values — by typing them a couple of times.

If you or someone you know gets tripped up by # vs ., though, consider that many programming languages use a . to access the members of an class-typed object.

I see I'm a day late (and maybe a dollar short), but I had the same problem in the early days and the following helped: for the dot (.) as the selector for Class, I remembered it as: "My class always starts on the dot, not a minute early or late." for the number sign (#) for ID, I just reminded myself that an ID(entification) card is incomplete without its number.

Spend lots of time writing CSS. When you've got it wrong enough times, your brain will give in and retain it.