Styling file select controls with CSS

This demo page is related to the article Styling form controls with CSS, revisited. For more info on the purpose of this page, please read the article.

Each file select control consists of this HTML:

1. <input type="file">

The following CSS rules are used to style the input elements:

1. #el01 {width:100%} /* Width */
2. #el02 { /* Text and background colour, blue on light gray */
3. color:#00f;
4. background-color:#ddd;
5. }
6. #el03 {background:url(/i/icon-info.gif) no-repeat 100% 50%} /* Background image */
7. #el04 {border-width:6px} /* Border width */
8. #el05 {border:2px dotted #00f} /* Border width, style and colour */
9. #el06 {border:none} /* No border */
10. #el07 {font-family:"Courier New",Courier} /* Different font */
11. #el08 {font-size:2em} /* Bigger text */
12. #el09 {font-size:0.5em} /* Smaller text */
13. #el10 {font-weight:bold} /* Bold text */
14. #el11 {padding:1em} /* Increase padding */
15. #el12 {text-align:right} /* Change text alignment */

In your current browser, with your current settings, the input elements look like this:

And here are screenshots from several browsers on different operating systems:

1. Camino 1, Mac OS X 10.4.8
2. Firefox 2.0.0.1, Mac OS X 10.4.8
3. Firefox 2.0.0.1, Ubuntu 6.10
4. Firefox 2.0.0.1, Windows XP
5. iCab 3.0.3, Mac OS X 10.4.8
6. Internet Explorer 6, Windows XP
7. Internet Explorer 7, Windows XP
8. Konqueror 3.5.5, Kubuntu
9. OmniWeb 5.5.1, Mac OS X 10.4.8
10. Opera 9.10, Mac OS X 10.4.8
11. Opera 9.10, Ubuntu 6.10
12. Opera 9.10, Windows XP
13. Safari 2.0.4, Mac OS X 10.4.8
14. WebKit 420+, Mac OS X 10.4.8

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It is worth noting that according to the HTML 4.01 Specification, User agents may use the value of the value attribute as the initial file name.. However, for security reasons no browsers (at least none of the browsers I have tested) do this.