Last-child of a certain class isn't working - html

Question

Can any body tell me how I use last-child selector to style my last div of subs?
This is my HTML -
<div class="main">
<div class="subs"></div>
<div class="subs"></div>
<div class="subs"></div>
<div class="subs"></div>
<div class="paginate"></div>
</div>
I tried it something like this in my CSS -
div.main div.subs:last-child {
border: none;
}
But its not working. If I remove paginate div, then it is working. So can I know how can I style last subs div without any extra id or class declaration.
Thank you.

Answer 1

Assuming there is only ever 1 element succeeding your .subs (.paginate), you can use this:
div.main div:nth-last-child(2) {
border:none;
}
See this JSFiddle
This can be seen as a little hacky, and if your paginate element is ever absent, then the wrong sub element will be targeted. Your only other option is to give the .subs their own container and then use :last-child:
Another JSFiddle
P.S: To understand why :last-child isn't working the way you want it to, I really recommend also reading Spudley's answer.

Answer 2

The problem you have is because of :last-child doesn't work the way you think it does.
The :last-child selector will select an element only if it is the last child of its parent.
In the case of your .main element, the last child inside it is the .pagination div. This means that .main>*:last-child can only select the pagination div. It doesn't matter if you filter it down by specifying .subs; you can't select anything else using :last-child because none of the other elements are the last child of .main. If the actual last child element isn't in the filtered selection, it will select nothing rather than selecting something that isn't the last child.
The best way to work around this is to wrap your subs elements inside an additional layer of markup, so that the last one then does become the last child of that container element. Either that, or move the pagination element outside of the main element; whatever works best for your layout.
The other selector you might have tried, :last-of-type works in a similar way. For the time being, there isn't a CSS selector you can use instead to pick the last .subs element, using your current markup. (unless you're happy to go with :nth-last-child(2) which will pick the second-last child, on the assumption that the pagination div will always be present).
In the new selectors being designed for CSS4, there is a set of 'match' selectors that would do exactly what you want to do. You would use :nth-last-match(1) to get the last matching element. This is the selector you need. Unfortunately, it isn't available in current browsers, and there's no real hint yet as to when (or even whether) it will be available in the future. For the time being, you can read about it here, but not use it. You might be able to use it or something similar via a JS library like jQuery.
Hope that helps explain things to you.

Answer 3

I would suggest that you add an extra class name to the last element. http://jsfiddle.net/5FQck/
div.main div {
border: #000 thin solid;
}
div.main div.subs.last {
border: none;
}
<div class="main">
<div class="subs">subs</div>
<div class="subs">subs</div>
<div class="subs">subs</div>
<div class="subs last">subs</div>
<div class="paginate">pagination</div>
</div>
None of the following selectors work in IE 8 and below, primarily because they are all CSS3 selectors.
:nth-child(N)
:nth-last-child(N)
:nth-of-type(N)
:nth-last-of-type(N)
You could also add that new class to the last element using JQuery: http://jsfiddle.net/5FQck/1/
$('div.main div.subs:last').addClass('last');

Answer 4

If I understand you correctly, I would do it like this.
.main .subs:nth-child(4)
{
border:none;
}