:not(:empty) CSS selector is not working?

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I'm having a heck of a time with this particular CSS selector which does not want to work when I add :not(:empty) to it. It seems to work fine with any combination of the other selectors:

input:not(:empty):not(:focus):invalid { border-color: #A22; box-shadow: none }

If I remove the :not(:empty) part, it works just fine. Even if I change the selector to input:not(:empty) it still won't select input fields which have text typed into them. Is this broken or am I just not allowed to use :empty within a :not() selector?

The only other thing I can think of is that browsers are still saying that the element is empty because it has no children, just a "value" per say. Does the :empty selector not have separate functionality for an input element versus a regular element? This doesn't seem probable though because using :empty on a field and typing something into it will cause the alternate effects to go away (because it is no longer empty).

Tested in Firefox 8 and Chrome.

html css css-selectors

Edit Report

You may approach this differently; omit the use of the :empty pseudo-class, and utilize input events to detect a significant value in the <input> field, then style it accordingly:

var inputs = document.getElementsByTagName('input');

for (var i = 0; i < inputs.length; i++) {
  var input = inputs[i];
  input.addEventListener('input', function() {
    var bg = this.value ? 'green' : 'red';
    this.style.backgroundColor = bg;
  });
}

body {
  padding: 40px;
}
#inputList li {
  list-style-type: none;
  padding-bottom: 1.5em;
}
#inputList li input,
#inputList li label {
  float: left;
  width: 10em;
}
#inputList li input {
  color: white;
  background-color: red;
}
#inputList li label {
  text-align: right;
  padding-right: 1em;
}

<ul id="inputList">
  <li>
    <label for="username">Enter User Name:</label>
    <input type="text" id="username" />
  </li>
  <li>
    <label for="password">Enter Password:</label>
    <input type="password" id="password" />
  </li>
</ul>

Another post on DOM Mutation Events, suggesting the use of input Events (DOM Mutation Events are now deprecated in DOM level 4, and have been replaced by DOM Mutation Observers).

Disclaimer: note that input events are currently experimental, and probably

answered 2012-07-17T13:38:27.683

:not(:empty) CSS selector is not working?

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