Pleaseselectors
Safe to use with fallbackcssMost CSS Selectors are supported from IE8 onwards, so you should be safe to use them.
- Verdict
- Safe to use
- Category
- CSS features
- Browser support
- Can I Use
- Works in
- all modern browsers
Should you use selectors in 2026?
But do note that, on browsers that do not support these selectors, a whole rule will be detected as invalid if these unsupported selectors are present. For example, in IE6 #main, p:first-child {} would be invalid because it is unable to understand p:first-child. We strongly recommend you do not try to polyfill this, but if you do need one, you could use Selectivizr.
#### When you sunset IE8 support, you can use:
- These very useful selectors: <a href="https://css-tricks.com/how-nth-child-works/">
:nth-child(n)</a>,:last-child,:target,:not(s),:enabled,:disabled,:checked,::selection - These ones, too:
:root,:nth-last-child(n),:nth-of-type(n),:nth-last-of-type(n),:first-of-type,:last-of-type,:only-child,:only-of-type,:empty
<!-- [].forEach.call( document.querySelectorAll('td'), function(elem){ if (elem.innerText.trim() == 'No') elem.style.backgroundColor = 'red'; if (elem.innerText.trim() == 'Yes') elem.style.backgroundColor = 'green'; }); -->
Polyfills and fallbacks
Progressive enhancement works well here: browsers without support degrade gracefully, so a dedicated polyfill is usually unnecessary.