Css hover on before element

Question

I have a div and a div:before. I want when the mouse goes over (hover) the :before element to change its color. Is there a way to do it no matter with css or jQuery?

I tried stuff like div:before:hover but nothing happened

Thanks in advance

Solution 1

Solution 1

(doesn't resolve question) With just css:

span:before {
    color: red;
    content: "hi";
}
span:hover:before {
    color: blue;
}

html

<span>text</span>

edit: fiddle http://jsfiddle.net/bwkM6/

Solution 2

Work around for given problem without :before

http://jsfiddle.net/Z97uN/1/

Solution 2

:before and :after pseudo classes cannot take on other pseudo-class attributes.

Solution 3

You can't combine pseudo-elements quite like that, apparently. However, you can use jQuery to inject your ":before" element into the DOM, rather than doing it with CSS.

$(function() {
    $('div.interesting').before('<div class="interesting-before"></div>');
});

Then in your CSS you just reference .interesting-before and .interesting-before:hover instead of .interesting:before and .interesting:before:hover.

See http://jsfiddle.net/Z97uN/2/ for an example.