CSS chaining performance

Question

I don't know if chaining is the right term.
I talk about coding like this:

    html > body > div > ul > li > a{
        /*css*/
    }

I talked with a friend of mine who told me that coding css like this is giving low perfomance on the browser when rendering the css.
So is this true or I really should declarate only classes/id's and specify on them?

Answer 1

You should be only as specific as you have to be in order to target your elements. Using id is preferrable.

Ultimately though -this sort of micro optimisation is fairly irrelevant. Only worth looking at once you have optimised pretty much everything else (compressing images, serving of static content, using css sprites, minimising assets etc.)

http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2009/03/10/performance-impact-of-css-selectors/

Answer 2

In my opinion you should use the least number of selection rules required. The more rules the longer it takes to process.

So yes it is better practice to use classes and IDs.

Also the example you gave above, if you are trying to apply the CSS to all tags it will work fine with just

a {
/* css */
}