I'd like so suggest that an operator to reverse the matching order of selectors could be a very useful thing.
Ex:
<div class="ColorBackground>
<img class="AlphaImage">
</div>If one wanted to select any <div> that contained an image with class "AlphaImage", there is no way to do so.
this situation (for me at the moment) is complicated by "ColorBackground" being any of eight values, but I would like each of those div classes to share common attributes.
the selector:
div img.thumb { }will select the img tag for modification under current rules. There is no way to universally select that div under CSS2.
I think an operator such as a leading "!"(exclamation mark) or "<"(less than) should reverse the matching order such that the selector above would match the most outside element instead of the most inner one.
Ex:
! div img.thumb { }Placing the modifier at the start of the line seems the best choice to me as the intent is clear from outset. I would suggest that this work for all selector types, not just the simple inheritance case demonstrated.
I write this because in the case I just wanted to use it for it would save significant markup in the style sheet and be easier to read and maintain than the alternatives. I was actually rather shocked that I could not locate an existing mechanism to simply select a parent instead of a child. With such a selector my page could perhaps be
Specifically in this case, I want to use the enclosing div's background color setting to for the color behind a PNG image file with alpha channel. There will be several colors available, and it would be simpler to set all the other common attributes of the div via such a selector than to set them all discreetly or by grouping. I'm certain there are other more blase cases for such an operator, especially in dynamically generated content.
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