1/19/26, 6:17 PM
The CSS namespaces module defines the syntax for using namespaces in CSS.
CSS isn't just for styling HTML. A stylesheet may be used to style SVG, MathML, XML,
or HTML, each of which has a different namespace or a document containing
multiple namespaces.
The @namespace at-rule defined in this module enables distinguishing between
same-named elements in different namespaces. Element tag names are not unique
to a single language. For example, the element isn't limited to HTML. You may want
to style the s within your SVGs differently from the links in your HTML. You also will
likely want to ensure that querySelectorAll("a") selects the right kind of element.
Namespacing can help.
The @namespace rule is used for declaring a default namespace and for binding
namespaces to namespace prefixes. The namespaces module also defines the
syntax for using these prefixes to represent namespace-qualified names. That's it.
What a name means or if the name is even valid depends on the context and host
language.
In this article Reference Guides Related concepts Specifications See also Hetzner
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At-rules and descriptors @namespace Guides Namespaces crash course Deep dive
into what a namespace is and how they are used in XML and XML-based markup
languages.
Related concepts CSS namespace separator (|) combinator CSS type selectors CSS
universal selector CSSNamespaceRule interface [Link]
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Specifications Specification CSS Namespaces Module Level 3 See also SVG element
data type CSS at-rules CSS at-rule functions CSS selectors Help improve MDN
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