first-child not working

Question

Should this work am I going crazy?

.project.work:first-child:before {
  content: 'Projects';
}
.project.research:first-child:before {
  content: 'Research';
}

<div class="project work">
  <p>abcdef</p>
</div>
<div class="project work">
  <p>abcdef</p>
</div>
<div class="project work">
  <p>abcdef</p>
</div>
<div class="project research">
  <p>abcdef</p>
</div>

projects:first-child works fine, research:first-child doesn't stick. Any ideas?

Demo It doesn't work, but whats the best way to achieve this?

Answer 1

:first-child only selects the first child of its parent. Nothing else.

As mentioned in a few of my other answers on the site (1 2 3 4), there is no :first-of-class pseudo-class. If you are looking to apply styles to the first of each class of your div elements, a solution is to apply the styles to all children of that class, and a general sibling selector to undo the styles from subsequent siblings.

Your CSS would then look like this:

.project.work:before {
    content: 'Work';
}

.project.research:before {
    content: 'Research';
}

.project.work ~ .project.work:before, 
.project.research ~ .project.research:before {
    content: none;
}