CSS Reset, default styles for common elements

Question

After applying a CSS reset, I want to get back to \'normal\' behavior for html elements like: p, h1..h6, strong, ul and li.

Now when I say normal I mean e.g. the p e

Answer 1

Once you have assigned a value to a CSS property of an element, there is no way getting back the “normal” value for it, assuming “normal” means “browser default”, as it seems to mean here. So the only way to have, say, an h1 element have the browser default font-size is to not set the property at all for it in your CSS code.

Thus, to exempt some properties and elements from CSS reset, you need to use a more limited CSS reset. For example, you must not use * { font-size: 100% } but replace * by a list of selectors, like input, textarea { font-size: 100% } (the list could be rather long, but e.g. browser defaults for font-size differ from 100% for a few elements only).

It is of course possible to set properties to values that you expect to be browser defaults. There is no guarantee that this will have the desired effect on all browsers, current and future. But for some properties and elements, this can be relatively safe, because the defaults tend to be similar.

In particular, you might use section Rendering in HTML5 CR. It describes “expected rendering” – not a requirement, though browser vendors may decide to claim conformance to them if they so wish, and generally this will probably keep implementations rather similar in this respect. For example, for h1 the expected settings are (collected here into one rule – in HTML5 CR they are scattered around):

h1 {
unicode-bidi: isolate;
display: block;
margin-top: 0.67em;
margin-bottom: 0.67em;
font-size: 2.00em;
font-weight: bold;
}

(There are additional contextual rules. E.g., nesting h1 inside section is expected to affect the settings.)

Answer 2

Check out YUI (Yahoo's open source user interface conventions).

They have a base stylesheet that undoes their own reset css. They dont actaully recommend you use it in production - since its counter productive but definitely might be worth checking out the file to get relevant snippets for what you want to 'undo'.

I recommend you watch the 40 minute talk to get up to speed.

Heres a short snippet of their base.css file :

ol li {
    /*giving OL's LIs generated numbers*/
    list-style: decimal outside;    
}
ul li {
    /*giving UL's LIs generated disc markers*/
    list-style: disc outside;
}
dl dd {
    /*giving UL's LIs generated numbers*/
    margin-left:1em;
}
th,td {
    /*borders and padding to make the table readable*/
    border:1px solid #000;
    padding:.5em;
}
th {
    /*distinguishing table headers from data cells*/
    font-weight:bold;
    text-align:center;
}

Download the full stylesheets below or read full documentation.

Yahoo reset css | Yahoo base (undo) reset css

Answer 3

Normal behaviour for WebKit h1:

h1 {
    display: block;
    font-size: 2em;
    margin: .67__qem 0 .67em 0;
    font-weight: bold
}

Normal behaviour for Gecko h1:

h1 {
    display: block;
    font-size: 2em;
    font-weight: bold;
    margin: .67em 0;
}

The rest of the elements should be there if you search the files.

Answer 4

I'm not resetting all the elements by default because the default styles are somehow browser depended, so they varies from browser to browser. Instead of using something like ul, ol { list-style: none; }, I'm adding a CSS class like r or reset and then I specify that if that is a ul which has a r class, reset it or otherwise please leave it to be untouched.

By the way you need to add class="reset" (for example) to all of those elements, which is extra work and code, however you'd have all of your default styles untouched at the end in return!

Answer 5

Rather than using a total CSS reset, think about using something like Normalize, which "preserves useful defaults".

To find out what your browser thinks of as default, open a plain HTML file with lists and view the lists with a CSS debugger like Firebug, and look under the Computed tab.