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csscss-reset

Why don't CSS resets use '*' to cover all elements?

For example, the Meyer reset has a long list of elements1 which I believe can be replaced with a *?

I have seen some use of:

* {
   margin: 0;
   padding: 0;
 }

But more "advanced" resets seem to go with explicitly stating the tags.

The only elements I don't see covered in the tag list that are covered (I presume) with a * are input, button, and select—the Eric Meyer reset, in fact, doesn't appear to really deal with those elements at all. If avoiding resetting these elements is the issue…why wouldn't you? Browsers obviously don't all display form elements the same.

1 html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre, a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code, del, dfn, em, img, ins, kbd, q, s, samp, small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var, b, u, I, center, dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li, fieldset, form, label, legend, table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td, article, aside, canvas, details, embed,
figure, figcaption, footer, header, hgroup,
menu, nav, output, ruby, section, summary, time, mark, audio, video if you're curious.

Solution

  • You've guessed correctly - the reason is form elements.

    If you set border: 0 on for example an input, it will lose the native styling.

    For example: http://jsfiddle.net/nrB6N/

    And, there's no way to get that default styling back.