Why doesn't this CSS :first-child selector work?

Question

I\'m working on an Asp.Net MVC 3 project and have run into a brick wall on why this doesn\'t work like I think it should.

My markup is:

Answer 1

fieldset > div:first-child means "select the first child element of a fieldset if it's a div".

It does not mean "select the first div in the fieldset".

The first child in this case is <input type="hidden" value="2">.

To select that div without changing the HTML, you need to use fieldset > div:first-of-type.

Unfortunately, while :first-child is widely supported, :first-of-type only works in IE9+ and other modern browsers.

So, in this case, the best fix is to continue using fieldset > div:first-child, and simply move <input type="hidden" value="2"> so that's it's not the first child.