Create The Perfect CSS Reset

As every new and experience web developer knows, different browsers process code differently. What may look perfect in Firefox, may be off in Internet Explorer. As annoying and tedious it is to make your website browser compatible, one CSS style sheet can save you a bunch of time from fixing IE6 errors.

These are called CSS Reset sheets and can reduce the time you spend on browser compatibility by resetting CSS elements.

There are many CSS Resets all over the internet that help combat browser problems. Below are a few great CSS Resets:

Instead of focusing on the CSS Reset Frameworks, I want you as the readers to help me in the process of creating a perfect CSS Reset style sheet.

The basic reset

I use Eric Meyer’s Resetting Again as my CSS reset sheet and with his knowledge, his style sheet serves as a start to browser resetting and compatibility. Here we will start with his Resetting Again style sheet:

html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe,
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre,
a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code,
del, dfn, em, font, img, ins, kbd, q, s, samp,
small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var,
b, u, i, center,
dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li,
fieldset, form, label, legend,
table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td {
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	border: 0;
	outline: 0;
	font-size: 100%;
	vertical-align: baseline;
	background: transparent;
}
body {
	line-height: 1;
}
ol, ul {
	list-style: none;
}
blockquote, q {
	quotes: none;
}

/* remember to define focus styles! */
:focus {
	outline: 0;
}

/* remember to highlight inserts somehow! */
ins {
	text-decoration: none;
}
del {
	text-decoration: line-through;
}

/* tables still need 'cellspacing="0"' in the markup */
table {
	border-collapse: collapse;
	border-spacing: 0;
}

Blockquotes are important

His style sheet covers the basics of  resetting the browser’s styles, but if you look at the comments on Eric Meyer’s Resetting Again, you will see people are discussing more ways to reset the browsers. If you look at the comment by Paul Chaplin, he commented on the removal of from Reset Reloaded:

blockquote:before, blockquote:after, q:before, q:after
{
content: "";
}

He brought up that Safari will “automatically generate doubled quotes when there are hard-coded quotes in the markup” if not specified properly. On his blog, he has properly coded a fix to the blockquote code:

blockquote, q
{
	quotes: none;
}

/*
Safari doesn't support the quotes attribute, so we do this instead.
*/
blockquote:before, blockquote:after, q:before, q:after
{
	/*
	CSS 2; used to remove quotes in case "none" fails below.
	*/
	content: "";
	/*
	CSS 2.1; will remove quotes if supported, and override the above.
	User-agents that don't understand "none" should ignore it, and
	keep the above value. This is here for future compatibility,
	though I'm not 100% convinced that it's a good idea...
	*/
	content: none;
}

Adding this into Eric Meyer’s reset sheet includes an amazing blockquote reset for Safari, which is becoming a very popular browser. So now our style sheet should look like this:

html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe,
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre,
a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code,
del, dfn, em, font, img, ins, kbd, q, s, samp,
small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var,
b, u, i, center,
dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li,
fieldset, form, label, legend,
table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td {
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	border: 0;
	outline: 0;
	font-size: 100%;
	vertical-align: baseline;
	background: transparent;
}
body {
	line-height: 1;
}
ol, ul {
	list-style: none;
}
blockquote, q {
	quotes: none;
}

/* remember to define focus styles! */
:focus {
	outline: 0;
}

/* remember to highlight inserts somehow! */
ins {
	text-decoration: none;
}
del {
	text-decoration: line-through;
}

/* tables still need 'cellspacing="0"' in the markup */
table {
	border-collapse: collapse;
	border-spacing: 0;
}

blockquote, q
{
	quotes: none;
}

/*
Safari doesn't support the quotes attribute, so we do this instead.
*/
blockquote:before, blockquote:after, q:before, q:after
{
	/*
	CSS 2; used to remove quotes in case "none" fails below.
	*/
	content: "";
	/*
	CSS 2.1; will remove quotes if supported, and override the above.
	User-agents that don't understand "none" should ignore it, and
	keep the above value. This is here for future compatibility,
	though I'm not 100% convinced that it's a good idea...
	*/
	content: none;
}

Combat the IE font sizing bug

If you look further down the page, you will see a comment by Pari that brings up the IE Font Sizing Bug and how the font should be changed to font-size: 100.01% to counter the font sizing bug. Virtually, there is no change between 100% and 100.01%, but to reset fonts, we will add that to our style sheet:

html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe,
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre,
a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code,
del, dfn, em, font, img, ins, kbd, q, s, samp,
small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var,
b, u, i, center,
dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li,
fieldset, form, label, legend,
table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td {
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	border: 0;
	outline: 0;
	font-size: 100.01%;
	vertical-align: baseline;
	background: transparent;
}
body {
	line-height: 1;
}
ol, ul {
	list-style: none;
}
blockquote, q {
	quotes: none;
}

/* remember to define focus styles! */
:focus {
	outline: 0;
}

/* remember to highlight inserts somehow! */
ins {
	text-decoration: none;
}
del {
	text-decoration: line-through;
}

/* tables still need 'cellspacing="0"' in the markup */
table {
	border-collapse: collapse;
	border-spacing: 0;
}

blockquote, q
{
	quotes: none;
}

/*
Safari doesn't support the quotes attribute, so we do this instead.
*/
blockquote:before, blockquote:after, q:before, q:after
{
	/*
	CSS 2; used to remove quotes in case "none" fails below.
	*/
	content: "";
	/*
	CSS 2.1; will remove quotes if supported, and override the above.
	User-agents that don't understand "none" should ignore it, and
	keep the above value. This is here for future compatibility,
	though I'm not 100% convinced that it's a good idea...
	*/
	content: none;
}

End result

Lastly, optional, but two essential techniques to reset forms are adding textarea { overflow: auto; } which automatically disables the scrollbar IE places inside textareas and putting input { border: 0px solid white; margin: 0;  padding: 0; } into our style sheet to reset the input and take away the borders that different browsers put. You may take out the last one if you want to keep a simple input for a simple contact form, but if you are planning to style the inputs together or individually; you should put that into the style sheet. Nonetheless, our style sheet ends up looking like this:

html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe,
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre,
a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code,
del, dfn, em, font, img, ins, kbd, q, s, samp,
small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var,
b, u, i, center,
dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li,
fieldset, form, label, legend,
table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td {
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	border: 0;
	outline: 0;
	font-size: 100.01%;
	vertical-align: baseline;
	background: transparent;
}
body {
	line-height: 1;
}
ol, ul {
	list-style: none;
}
blockquote, q {
	quotes: none;
}

/* remember to define focus styles! */
:focus {
	outline: 0;
}

/* remember to highlight inserts somehow! */
ins {
	text-decoration: none;
}
del {
	text-decoration: line-through;
}

/* tables still need 'cellspacing="0"' in the markup */
table {
	border-collapse: collapse;
	border-spacing: 0;
}

blockquote, q
{
	quotes: none;
}

/*
Safari doesn't support the quotes attribute, so we do this instead.
*/
blockquote:before, blockquote:after, q:before, q:after
{
	/*
	CSS 2; used to remove quotes in case "none" fails below.
	*/
	content: "";
	/*
	CSS 2.1; will remove quotes if supported, and override the above.
	User-agents that don't understand "none" should ignore it, and
	keep the above value. This is here for future compatibility,
	though I'm not 100% convinced that it's a good idea...
	*/
	content: none;
}

textarea { overflow: auto; }
input { border: 0px solid white; margin: 0;  padding: 0; }

Now, it’s your turn as the reader to discuss this with me and continue the improvement of this reset sheet. Please comment in this post your contribution to this style sheet. Point out the flaws: mine’s, Eric’s and the commentor’s flaws.