Hi all,
Came upon this article that describes an interesting take on having a base css instead of a reset.
The author seems to have some interesting points in his base sheet (e.g. to avoid CM, preventing a gap from showing below images in some browsers,… ).
What’s your opinion on his sheet?
Some seem redundant to me, like setting white as a default background but nevertheless, seems interesting…
I see some hacks in his CSS, which I don’t approve of 
ALso everything being on one line makes it much harder to read…
His version is just a simplified version of Eric Meyers. I’m sure there are other variations. None is perfect; none meets the need of hte author completely, (unless it’s Meyers, which is overkill). To each its own
Overall the base.css is very clean.
Loved the article :). Very well written out. I loved it.
To me it still seems kind of bloated but it has some appealing stuff, mainly to avoid some problems, like the ‘how come i have a space under my image’ and CM related stuff. Although i don’t use resets (tnx Paul 
) i’m inclined to admit that some stuff he has there is pretty useful. And as for the hacks … well, that one gave me a bit the creeps. Hacks should be the ultimate remedy when all else fail lol… but who am i…
Yes all resets can be a bit bloated. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a complete reset ;).
When I code for clients (the few I get :x) I just sit down for 20 minute and map out how I’m going to code it. It really does speed me up. I then incorporate all the elements I think I’ll use into my reset and then…I just do it.
That was a bit [ ot ] … I’m kinda torn about resets. I have yet to find a perfect one which doesn’t have overkill or underkill.
I might get started making my own reset
To be honest, at first the article had pointed me in the wrong direction: for me a base sheet is a sheet that has stuff you always use like in this case the vertical align for images and other stuff you pick up along the way that you always use. Resets … well many threads here have discussed that already.
When going over this one, i had a mixed feeling: to me it seems partial a base sheet and a reset sheet (base sheet like i understand it).
Setting margins and paddings to all those elements to 0 is a pure reset. On the other hand, the CM solution is quite nifty … i always try to avoid CM but sometimes i still fall in that trap lol. About his overflow-y trick… i’m not still 100% convinced …
So i’m not looking for my own reset but for my own base … lol
overflow-y didn’t work in (from meomry) Opera less then version 10. Opera users are fast upgraders though and with the smalll percentage base they have I doubt that the incompatibilities that are brought with that are non existant
Correct … Opera now handles it … and as an Opera user (and member of the opera list) i can confirm: all of them upgrade real quick. Wish it was the same with IE users lol
It’s an interesting effort, but almost as complex and overarching as Meyer’s. It’s commented very well, so people should have little trouble going through it and deciding what to keep and what to modify or jettison.
Edit: Carson’s site went down while I was writing this, but I take no credit or blame…
Yes Thierry is a very good author and the article is interesting and the code contains a lot of useful snippets especially for handling form elements. It would do a lot of designers a lot of good to read the code and understand the issues and the solutions.
However for me it stills fall into the category of “I do that as I go along anyway” but I can see for coders who don’t understand these issues that it could be useful.
I code 2 or 3 new templates every week and I have yet to see one where the tabular data is aligned consistently between designs. The designs are so varied that I could never set up a set of rules. e.g. some columns in the table are centred and some left and some right aligned. Some are vertical aligned to middle and some are aligned to the top or bottom. I would need to change/duplicate rules for all of these so why bother with them at all. Just do it right for the job in hand.
The same issues apply to all the other settings an I would need to change them to fit each design. It would be better to have them all as blank and just fill in the right details - or as I said before “do it as you go along”.
I also see issues where elements were created with padding and suggested to be used as building blocks because these would fail very often in IE6 due to haslayout issues in ie6 and ie7. Any building block must have a layout if you want to support ie6/7.
I also didn’t like the types of hacks used because it confused me as I can never remember which version of IE understands *something or _something. I always stick to the established and valid hacks.
But it was a worthwhile and well written article and will be of use to many in one way or another.
I was a bit surprised where he used a fix to prevent the broken box model but it is indeed well written and the sheet is very well commented …