What's the best way to override a user agent CSS stylesheet rule that gives unordered-lists a 1em margin?

Question

I\'m working on a web app that has a topBar similar to facebook\'s blue bar at the top. I have an unordered list within the div of that bar to list some items, like Inbox,

Answer 1

I had the same issues but nothing worked. What I did was I added this to the selector:

-webkit-appearance: none;
-moz-appearance: none;
appearance: none;

Answer 2

Everything you write in your own stylesheet is overwriting the user agent styles - that's the point of writing your own stylesheet.

Answer 3

If You Are Able to Edit the Offending Stylesheet

If the user-agent stylesheet's style is causing problems for the browser it's supposed to fix, then you could try removing the offending style and testing that to ensure it doesn't have any unexpected adverse effects elsewhere.

If it doesn't, use the modified stylesheet. Fixing browser quirks is what these sheets are for - they fix issues, they aren't supposed to introduce new ones.

If You Are Not Able to Edit the Offending Stylesheet

If you're unable to edit the stylesheet that contains the offending line, you may consider using the !important keyword.

An example:

.override {
    border: 1px solid #000 !important;
}

.a_class {
    border: 2px solid red;
}

And the HTML:

<p class="a_class">content will have 2px red border</p>
<p class="override a_class">content will have 1px black border</p>

Live example

Try to use !important only where you really have to - if you can reorganize your styles such that you don't need it, this would be preferable.

Answer 4

I don't understand why nobody points to the specific issue and some answers are totally misleading, especially the accepted answer. The issue is that the OP did not pick a rule that could possibly override the margin property that is set by the User Agent (UA) directly on the ul tag. Let's consider all the rules with a margin property used by the OP.

body {

margin:0px;
...
}

The body element is way up in the DOM and the UA rule matches an element below, so the UA wins. It's the way inheritance works. Inheritance is the means by which, in the absence of any specific declarations from any source applied by the CSS cascade, a property value of an element is obtained from its parent element. Specificity on the parent element is useless, because the UA rule matches directly the element.

#mainNav{
    margin:0 auto;
    ...
}

This is a better attempt, a more specific selector #mainNav, which matches the mainNav element lower in the DOM, but the same principle applies, because the ul element is still below this element in the DOM.

#mainNav ul li{
    ...
    margin:0;
    ...
}

This went too far down in the DOM! Now, the selector matches the li element, which is below the ul element.

So, assuming that the UA rule used the selector ul and not !important, which is most likely the case, the solution would have been a simple ul { margin: 0; }, but it would be safer to make it more specific, say #mainNav ul { margin: 0 }.

Answer 5

No its not. Use Meyers CSS reset :) http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/

Answer 6

put this in your "head" of your index.html

 <style>
  html body{
    left: 0;
    right: 0;
    bottom: 0;
    top: 0;
    margin: 0;
  }
  </style>