As there is now a standard CSS selector for previous siblings provided by CSS or css3. But we can use some tricks to select the previous siblings.

Using has:()

You can target or select the previous siblings by using has:() and immediate siblings’ selectors.

For example, I want to select 2nd li to color red, for this We can use the logic, to select the child which has an immediate sibling with the class name “.a3”

    <style>
        ul li:has(+ .a3) {
            color: red;
        }
    </style>
    <ul>
        <li class="a1">a1</li>
        <li class="a2">a2</li>
        <li class="a3">a3</li>
        <li class="a4">a4</li>
    </ul>

output

• a1
• a2
• a3
• a4

Other examples

Same as the above example we can use all other css selectors with has:() to select different previous or other sibling elements in HTML.

the following example is to select all previous siblings of the node which has class a3.

 <style>
        ul li:has(~ .a3) {
            color: red;
        }
    </style>
    <ul>
        <li class="a1">a1</li>
        <li class="a2">a2</li>
        <li class="a3">a3</li>
        <li class="a4">a4</li>
    </ul>

• a1
• a2
• a3
• a4

👉 Check other advanced css selectors