What does !important mean in CSS?

Question

What does !important mean in CSS?

Is it available in CSS 2? CSS 3?

Where is it supported? All modern browsers?

Answer 1

The !important rule is a way to make your CSS cascade but also have the rules you feel are most crucial always be applied. A rule that has the !important property will always be applied no matter where that rule appears in the CSS document.

So, if you have the following:

.class {
   color: red !important;
}
.outerClass .class {
   color: blue;
}

the rule with the important will be the one applied (not counting specificity)

I believe !important appeared in CSS1 so every browser supports it (IE4 to IE6 with a partial implementation, IE7+ full)

Also, it's something that you don't want to use pretty often, because if you're working with other people you can override other properties.