Virtual Elements

Virtual elements are created whenever CSS requires an element to be rendered but must not pollute the DOM. Importantly, virtual elements are ordered. For example, the virtual element created by ::after shows up after the 'real' element has been drawn. PowerUI handles this by storing all virtual elements in a SortedDictionary, indexed by a priority value. It's unique and constant for any given type of virtual element.

Accessing virtual elements

There's a web API for doing this - specifically the element.getComputedStyle("after") method, which is supported. The set itself is:

// Get the virtuals set for 'element' (A HtmlElement):
Css.VirtualElements virtuals=element.Style.Computed.Virtuals;

Note that it's null if there aren't any.

The priority value

You'll notice that the virtuals set uses those arbitrary priority values. In order to obtain a particular virtual element, you'll need to know what its priority is - fortunately, they're constant for any given type of element:

Virtual Element	Priority (C# const)	See Also
Horizontal scrollbar	ComputedStyle.HorizontalScrollPriority	Styling scrollbars
Vertical scrollbar	ComputedStyle.VerticalScrollPriority	Styling scrollbars
Textarea/ input field caret	HtmlCaretElement.Priority	Styling the caret
::before	BeforeSelector.Priority
::after	AfterSelector.Priority
::marker	MarkerSelector.Priority

What can I do with them?

They're completely ordinary elements which act exactly the same as a child of the element they're on. Essentially, you can do whatever you can normally do to elements to them too (The element itself is accessed from ComputedStyle.Element).