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csshtml

Is it a good idea to style the body tag?

In my fixed-width website, I have a layout similar to this:

<div id="wrapper">
  <header>...</header>
  <div id="content">...</div>
  <footer>...</footer>
</div>

And my CSS is similar to this:

#wrapper {
  width: 700px;
  margin-left: auto;
  margin-right: auto;
}

Styling the <body> tag the same way also works, and it makes my code more readable, as I have less nested <div> tags.

Is applying margins and a fixed with to the <body> a safe idea?

Solution

  • It is perfectly safe, body is an HTML element like all the others.

    For your layout, you might still want to use #wrapper (seems like a fixed width layout), because you might want to set a background for body (or do something with the visible "empty" space).