remove link underline from image only if the anchor tag contains an img

Question

<a href="#">
        <img width="103" height="100"  src="img source">
    </a>

for the above html code I am using the following css

a {
    border-bottom-style: dotted;
    border-bottom-width: 1px;
}

a img {
    border: 0 none;
}

Basically what I am trying to achieve here to underline the text links while keeping img links without any underline. however I guess by styling the text links I am also styling image links, I want any image in a link should not be underlined.

Can any one suggest work around for this?

Answer 1

The underline is caused by the text decoration on the a. So just apply text-decoration:none to the a.

Edit: there is currently no CSS-only way to apply a style to "any a that has an img as its child". CSS does not have selectors for that. So you'll either have to make these as unique by giving them classes (or other attributes) and apply the CSS to those classes, or run some script that tests for imgs in as and gives those as the desired style.

Answer 2

After a lot of Googling I finally found a neat trick that worked for me:

a img { border:none; vertical-align:top; }

Why this works?

By default both anchors and images are inline elements and by applying vertical-align:top; to an image inside an anchor, we move the anchor to the top of the image. For some reason images have higher z-index than anchors.

Source: Remove Border from Image Links

By the way, it would work great with a parent selector like a < img ... unfortunately this isn't implemented yet, but is in the workings. Take a look here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/45530/114029