Hi all, I guess I should add my 2 cents as well :) re: Russ' comments -- > 1. Once you have removed all margin and padding, this method relies on you > specifically styling the margins and padding of each HTML element that you > intend to use. On smaller sites where you may only need to style specific > containers and elements this method is very verbose and wasteful.
Perhaps listing troublesome elements instead of the wildcard selector would be a more favourable option for some, I prefer the clean slate approach. RE: Verbosity; probably, but not necessarily. I've most recently used this technique with a 5 page brochure-ware site to accompany my band's upcoming ep and I honestly don't think it added a noticable amount of weight. The benefits were immedietly noticable -- this site's design (url not avail. yet) took a 3 lazy hours to code and wasn't checked once in IE during the coding. Guess what? IE6 was identical in every way to Moz/FF+Op the very first time! My jaw dropped and I danced around the house like an idiot while the singer and bass player just stared at me as though I had lost the plot. I'm not going to pretend to be some kind of css-jedi that doesn't need to test in IE -- I was as surprised as anyone else would be. That declaration and a solid knowledge of when to throw in a 'position:relative;' were entirely responsible for slashing potentially up to an hour of debugging (depending on how many early evening beverages were consumed during ;) > 2. If you were to pass your site on to others who were less aware of CSS, > this method could cause great confusion. The method relies on an > understanding that any used HTML elements will have to be specifically > styled. If you were to pass your site to others who are less aware off css AND told them that they didn't have to worry about cancelling 'empty space' because everything was up to them, this method could cause great liberation. Well, I doubt it; but you get the idea. In the cases I've seen - mostly on codingforums.com - beginners develop bad cases of 'class-itis' due to a fear of using tag name selectors. This encourages/forces them to address the elements immedietly and individually; hopefully causing a greater focus on semantics in the process. ie "What content does this page have? What tags will I use?" instead of "Hmm... better use another div for this sentance". High hopes, I know :\ We can't on the one hand say "Don't rely on browser defaults" and on the other say "don't screw with the defaults -- future code monkeys will be confused". Each to their own; but you knew I wasn't going to agree from the get go. Lachlan wrote: >I found out later that a significant portion of the class has now adopted it for their own stylesheets. That's fantastic :D I didn't think anyone would even care about such a simple tactic. Many thanks for sharing! ...and to finally get to Nick's question: Personally, I don't think I'll ever stop using it; but there's no prize for guessing I was going to say that. All the client sites I've done since using this trick (none of which have been added to my folio...Damn I'm slack!) have had the CSS split up into: - default.css [page layout only] - type.css [all global typography, starting with declarations like p, pre, blockquote, etc...] - any other site specific stuff (eg. menu.css) Splitting the css into positioning and typography can be very helpful in conjunction to the global reset, but you have to have your wits about you to keep things neat and well ordered. -- Andrew -------------------------------- http://leftjustified.net ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
