Eric Meyer, the creator of really the first “global” CSS Reset has updated his code of the reset (found here) with some of the following changes:
- Removed
font
from the selector of the first rule. It’s been long enough now, I think. We can let that one go. - Removed
background: transparent
from the declaration block of the first rule. I don’t think it really served any purpose in the long run, given the way browsers style by default and the CSS-defined default forbackground-color
(whichbackground
encompasses, of course). Its removal will also stop causing table-appearance glitches in old versions of IE, if that’s of interest. - Added
font: inherit
to the declaration block of the first rule. There are still older versions of IE that don’t understandinherit
, but support is now widespread enough that I feel this can go in. I leftfont-size: 100%
as a sop to older browsers, and override it with the next declaration in those browsers that understand. - Added HTML5 elements to the selector of the first rule. While this is probably unnecessary right now, those elements being about as styled as a common
div
, it’s in the spirit of the thing to list them. - A separate rule to make blocks of those HTML5 elements that generally default to blocks. This is more backward-looking, as the comment suggests, and it’s a prime excision candidate for anyone adapting these styles to their own use. However, if you’ve ever known the pain of HTML5 markup shattering layouts in, say, older versions of Firefox, this rule has a place.
- Removed the “cellspacing” comment near the end. It used to be the case that lots of browsers needed the support, but that’s a lot less true today.
- And then the big one, trying to correct the biggest backfire of the whole enterprise: I commented out and subtly altered the commentary on the
:focus
rule without removing it entirely.
For those that care these are subtle but important changes.
What I find also pretty encouraging, besides the updates, is the fact that he acknowledges those that have copied and pasted his style and added to it without thinking about the right approach:
Instead, focus outlines were obliterated wholesale as lots and lots of people, not all of them craftsmen, just copied the reset and built on top of it without thinking about it. I can’t find it in my heart to fault them: most construction workers don’t think about how beams and rivets or even riveters are made. They just bolt ‘em together and make a building.
A very reasonable observation. I thank you Eric Meyer for creating this and especially for your grace since I’ve corrupted your reset a billion and a half times over.
Speak your mind...