Welcome to the Treehouse Community

The Treehouse Community is a meeting place for developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels to get support. Collaborate here on code errors or bugs that you need feedback on, or asking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project. Join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today. (Note: Only Treehouse students can comment or ask questions, but non-students are welcome to browse our conversations.)

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and a supportive community. Start your free trial today.

CSS CSS Foundations Selectors Basic Structural Pseudo-Classes

Katherine Liu
Katherine Liu
4,668 Points
Posted by Katherine Liu
Katherine Liu
4,668 Points

Pseudo-class first-child CSS

This is the question:

Select the li that is the first child of the ul. Set the color to white and background color to black.

and this is my code

ul:first-child {
  color: white; 
  background: black;
}

I must be doing something wrong, but I looked it over multiple times and compared them to the video examples.

The html code looks like this

<body>
    <ul>
        <li>First child of ul</li>
        <li>Second child</li>
        <li>Third child</li>
        <li>Fourth child</li>
        <li>Last child of ul</li>
    </ul>
</body>

This is the error message:

Please check your selector, make sure background-color is set to 'black'.

I tried it with hexidecimal and changed background to background-color, but I still get an error

2 Answers

Nicole H
Nicole H
2,981 Points
Nicole H
Nicole H
2,981 Points

It looks like you are targeting the ul only instead of the first li in the ul.

Katherine Liu
Katherine Liu
4,668 Points
Katherine Liu
Katherine Liu
4,668 Points

oh wow, I guess I misunderstood the whole concept of pseudo-classes. Thanks!

Sarah Armstrong
Sarah Armstrong
9,995 Points
Sarah Armstrong
Sarah Armstrong
9,995 Points

Hi Katherine, you want the first child that is a li. :first-child should be applied to the li, not the ul.