Alternative style sheets

Limited availability

This feature is not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers.

Specifying alternative style sheets in a web page provides a way for users to see multiple versions of a page, based on their needs or preferences.

Note: This feature is not well supported in browsers without an extension. To offer alternative presentations that work with a user's existing preferences, see the CSS media features prefers-color-scheme and prefers-contrast.

Firefox lets the user select the stylesheet using the View > Page Style submenu. Other browsers require an extension to enable this functionality. The web page can also provide its own user interface to let the user switch styles.

An example: specifying the alternative stylesheets

The alternate stylesheets are commonly specified using a <link> element with rel="alternate stylesheet" and title="…" attributes. For example:

html
<link href="reset.css" rel="stylesheet" />

<link href="default.css" rel="stylesheet" title="Default Style" />
<link href="fancy.css" rel="alternate stylesheet" title="Fancy" />
<link href="basic.css" rel="alternate stylesheet" title="Basic" />

In this example, the styles "Default Style", "Fancy", and "Basic" will be listed in the Page Style submenu, with "Default Style" pre-selected. When the user selects a different style, the page will immediately be re-rendered using that style sheet.

No matter what style is selected, the rules from the reset.css stylesheet will always be applied.

Try it out

Try a working example here.

Details

Any stylesheet in a document falls into one of the following categories:

  • Persistent (has rel="stylesheet", no title=""): always applies to the document.
  • Preferred (has rel="stylesheet", with title="…" specified): applied by default, but disabled if an alternate stylesheet is selected. There can only be one preferred stylesheet, so providing stylesheets with different title attributes will cause some of them to be ignored.
  • Alternate (rel="alternate stylesheet", with title="…" specified): disabled by default, can be selected.

When style sheets are referenced with a title attribute on the <link rel="stylesheet"> or <style> element, the title becomes one of the choices offered to the user. Style sheets linked with the same title are part of the same choice. Style sheets linked without a title attribute are always applied.

Use rel="stylesheet" to link to the default style, and rel="alternate stylesheet" to link to alternative style sheets. This tells the browser which style sheet title should be selected by default, and makes that default selection apply in browsers that do not support alternate style sheets.

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard
# rel-alternate
HTML Standard
# the-link-is-an-alternative-stylesheet
HTML Standard
# attr-style-title
HTML Standard
# attr-meta-http-equiv-default-style
CSS Object Model (CSSOM)
# css-style-sheet-collections

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser