Selecting all links except hovered one CSS only

Question

I\'m trying to make a CSS selector that matches all links except the hovered one. Naturally I though of using the ~ operator to catch around elements:

Answer 1

The following selector matches all links except a hovered link:

a[href]:not(:hover)

When no link is hovered, this matches all links, which logically satisfies the requirement.

Note that a matches all a elements, including ... (outdated, but works) and ... (valid, mentioned in HTML5 specs). Using a[href] restricts us to a elements that have href attribute, i.e. to links.

If you actually meant to ask for a selector that matches all links except a hovered link if there is a hovered link and no element otherwise, then there is no CSS solution (but there are JavaScript solutions).