What is a CSS Reset? The purpose of a CSS Reset was to start with a clean slate, or consistent baseline between all browsers when starting a new web development project. The idea can be summed up nicely by Jonathon Snook:

In case you’ve never heard of such a thing, a CSS Reset is designed to set a number of element styles to a specific baseline that creates consistency across various browsers. — Jonathon Snook, No CSS Reset

Over the years there have been many resets, all of which I would at some point try and read more about. The asterisk or star rest is one I never was keen on; it uses a lot of browser muscle, therefore slows the browser down, to go through every HTML element and set it’s margin and padding. On the form field front, removing the margin and paddingcan cause ill effects as well.

* { margin: 0; padding: 0; }

Build Up

Eric Meyer came up with a CSS Reset, and has revisisted it many times over the years. I’ve used Erics for years, and even argued ideology with changes made, because “what” to actually reset is always a good argument. Some people, like Jonathon Snook, decided not to use a CSS reset at all and I feel like that is the right choice for what he is doing. If you strip margin, padding and other CSS from the native browsers control, you have to build it back up.

Boiling Up

I have been a bit proponate of the work the team over at HTML5 Boilerplate have been doing; talk about years of knowledge being pooled into a cauldron to make the best starting place for every project, with modification of course, and out comes the HTML5 Boilerplate. These guys are awesome, I’ve learned so much, but back on track version 1.0 used a modified version of Eric Meyer’s Reset, modified by Richard Clark, called the HTML5 Reset Stylesheet. This offered more build up on top of the stipping out of elements Eric Meyer’s reset performed, and added HTML5 elements. On top of that the HTML5 Boilerplate added even more build up to normalize what resets ripped out, or even better to stabilize what one saw from one browser to the next (huge feats in the form arena). Using best practices the build up was fantastic, how could it get any better?

Video killed the radio star

At the end of the day, really what we are trying to accomplish is consistency. By resettings the browsers natural CSS but overriding it and building it back up we are just looking for a way to see things more consistenty as we view a site from one browser to the next. With upwards towards 10 browsers at any one point in time, in multiple operating system environments, this isn’t asking too much. So unlike a browser reset, work on a Normalize.css started appearing and eventually become baked into version 2.0 of the HTML5 Boilerplate.

Who are these guys?

Nicolas Gallagher and Jonathon Neal took the approach of a global reset differntly, looking at browser default CSS styling as a blessing and decided to just slightly modify that existing code and make it better with some new best practices.

• Will it work for every project?
  • No.
• Does it really kill off the CSS Reset?
  • Not for everyone, but it has for me.
• Will Jonathon Snook use it?
  • Probably not.
• Is it a good start for future proofing?
  • Hard to tell.

With the advent of Mobile First mentality, presumably this is still a good starting place as mobile browsers are moving closer to desktop browser capability. I can say that I for one will start my projects with Normalize.css, and this is the first time in years I’ll be moving from Eric Meyer’s Reset so that says a lot for what Nicolas and Jonathon have accomplished because I feel they have hit the nail on the head of what I want to accomplish with a baseline set of styles. As always, figure out what your projects requirements are and see if it makes sense to use Noramlize.css, Eric Meyer’s Reset, or even HTML5Boilerplate.

Don’t worry it’s not WP-Engine, nor WordCamp Philly which I just attended I am saying is pathetic, I am a passionate web designer and I am calling myself pathetic. Building custom web designs for small to medium sized law firms now for four years and it’s been over a year since my domain has had anything significant on it, it’s pathetic.

WordCamp Philly 2011

I participated in WordCamp Philly 2011 and overall was very pleased with the experience. I found free parking right outside of the paid parking, learned about everything from new WordPress hooks to responsive web design mock up ideas and how to deal with clients visions of responsive web. Met a few good people and met up with a few friends I haven’t seen in some time.

Start your WP-Engines!

When this baby hits 88MPH, your gonna see some serious shit

One of the fantastic sponsors of the event, WP-Engine, also gave away free lifetime hosting for each event holder. They boast faster and more responsive WordPress sites, and a bunch of features. They also have this handy dandy website performance analyzer one can use to analyze your site and see how much faster it will be on their service. I cannot thank them enough, it’s the kick in the rear I need because I have a lot to say and am looking to build a new site from the ground up.

What to expect

Roger, Roger. What’s our vector, Victor?

Over the next few weeks or months I will start putting in place a theme that will start mobile first. By building this way I will have a small screen size to start with and build my way up. There will be a few different break points where I feel content needs to change to look best on the device one is on but there is only so much one can do.

Most of all this will be fun. I cannot wait to finally have a playground that I can spend some time in, a sandbox to mold things. There are a lot of ideas in this head and I will probably try a bunch of them for fun here. So let’s see how fast WP-Engine is! I will be testing performance as well considering I have been an evangelist for (mt) for a few years now. The gauntlet has been thrown down. Feel free to join me, this will be a dialog not a monologue so feel free to chat with me. =)