

About normalize.css: a modern, HTML5-ready alternative to CSS resets - necolas
http://nicolasgallagher.com/about-normalize-css/

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ajanuary
One of the big things I like about CSS resets is it forces me to think about
every design decision rather than just going with the 'sensible' browser
defaults.

I guess with discipline I can train myself to always think about things like
the rhythm created by font-size and margins on headers, but I've not
experienced the downsides of a full reset yet.

~~~
bicknergseng
I agree. Maybe I'm missing the point, but I loathe default stylings. Ugly grey
buttons and annoying blue html links normalized across browsers are still ugly
grey buttons and annoying blue html links.

~~~
biftek
The point of normalize, at least how I use it and understand it, is if you
wanted to change a default style you just go into the normalize.css file and
change the style of links, or buttons in there, and be assured they work cross
browser.

As apposed to having to to declare a reset, and then re-declaring everything
again.

He says this in the article too: "Approach 1: use normalize.css as a starting
point for your own project’s base CSS, customising the values to match the
design’s requirements."

The point of normalize is not to keep links blue, and buttons gray. They find
the rendering discrepancies between browsers, fix them, and make it easy for
you to change.

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jsdalton
I use it indirectly (via Twitter Bootstrap) and I have no complaints.

I found it a bit curious though that they don't dogfood it on their Github
page (<http://necolas.github.com/normalize.css/>), but I guess that's not a
huge deal or anything.

~~~
necolas
> I found it a bit curious though that they don't dogfood it on their Github
> page

I do! But it's using and customising only the parts that are needed (...and a
few lines of CSS are a bit old and out-of-date).

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bcullman
Perhaps I am missing something here. I looked at the demo page in FF10,
Chrome17, and IE 8, and I see different spacing in rendering across those
platforms (mostly in IE8, but FF10 and Chrome17 are not the same either)

<http://i.imgur.com/SMwHD.png>

~~~
andrewmu
Not just spacing. The font size seems consistently slightly larger. Have you
checked the browser zoom level is 100%?

~~~
bcullman
Ah. that was it. I had IE set to 110%

I have reset IE to 100%, and retaken the screen cap. I still see differences.
take a look:

<http://i.imgur.com/3ZZ6T.png>

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stepeight
I have been using normalize for the past few months in all of my new projects
and I can attest to its superiority over the standard resets. Great work, as
ever, necolas.

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pbhjpbhj
Doesn't this mean that you have to address the specifics of each browser that
might use your site though?

So if Konqueror 3.42 [made up version] has a bug giving a default of double
the normal padding on h1 then I have to specifically check that this is
addressed by the attempted normalization.

>" _Normalize.css is an alternative to CSS resets. The project is the product
of 100′s of hours of extensive research by @necolas and @jon_neal on the
differences between default browser styles._ "

Makes me think that I'm going to need to update every site using this with
every new browser version that has a pixel difference in it's default style; a
situation that a reset just works on.

Of course resets are subject to browser bugs too but it seems that they are
more robust and more likely to just work ...?

~~~
bgarbiak
Best solution would be to reset default styles and only then normalize them
across browsers.

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gioele
> Normalize.css is modular

That is a strong claim given that the "modularisation" is realised adding
banner comments in the CSS. I think it would had been better to have separate
@import'ed files. Those worried about performance could use minificators while
other, like me, could just use the parts they are interested in, in my case

    
    
        @import 'normalize.css/html5-fixes.css'
        @import 'normalize.css/html5-defaults.css'

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run4yourlives
Is it just me or is hosting a single css file on a git repository a little
silly? Not like one would continually check out the latest version.

That said, a reset file is always a good idea, and this is a nice evolution
thereof.

~~~
timdorr
> Not like one would continually check out the latest version.

Why not? It's being updated regularly:
<https://github.com/necolas/normalize.css/commits/master>

~~~
run4yourlives
Because it's a reset file... meaning the moment you change it the changes will
cascade into your css.

The last thing I would want is the behaviour of my css changing periodically.

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ars
This looks really nice. The only thing I didn't like is the proportional font
for input fields - it makes it hard to synchronize size and maxlength.

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hluska
I just tried out normalize in a project I'm working on - so far, everything is
great. Thanks for the hard work, Necolas!

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chmike
Any plans to provide a version made available by a CDN like jQuery ?

