Is there a way to specify "initial" values in css shorthands like padding?

Say I have a complex stylesheet with lots of interacting styles etc.

For a specific class, I want to override padding-top and padding-bot开发者_如何学Pythontom, without changing the values of padding-left and padding-right (which might even be different things for different elements that get the class I'm specifying).

Is there a way to do this with a shorthand, something like

.special {
    padding: 10px initial 5px;
}

that leaves the previous values, or do I have to spell out my css like this:

.special {
    padding-top: 10px;
    padding-bottom: 5px;
}

Thanks.

No you can't use something like 'initial', you should use padding-top and padding-bottom.

I don't think there is any way around spelling it out. Sorry.

You'd have to specify it as in your second example, it's possible that the browser would interpret inherit in some means:

.special {padding: 10px inherit 5px inherit; }

but the inherited values would come from the parent element of .special, not necessarily the 'default' values.

inherit can only be used as replacement for the value, not in place of a length (from "CSS: The Definitive Guide": values: [ | ]{1,4} | inherit. @Lekensteyn

In consequence, then, it would be required to specify the values long-hand.

Well if you know that the left and right padding will always be the same number, you could write it like:

.special {padding:10px 5px 10px 5px;}

Not without using one of the css frameworks that have sprung up like Less: http://lesscss.org/