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Comment by assimpleaspossi | Hacker News Reader

My point remains the same. And I'm not sure there is a difference between a reset and a normalizer.

They more or less had the same goals, different ways of achieving them.

- CSS reset - completely reset all browser styles to be blank essentially, across different browsers, so then you'll build your styling on common ground

- CSS normalize - same idea of resetting to a baseline, but keeping some of the default styling but still make it consistent across browsers, so not stripping away everything

Presumably, a reset is resetting to a browser's defaults, whereas a normaliser is about establishing a cross-browser default. I haven't done much web-dev in recent years, but I vividly remember the same page looking different in different browsers, particularly prior to HTML5.

> a reset is resetting to a browser's defaults

No, a browser's defaults are, well, its defaults. One doesn't reset to them.

I think the line between a normalizer and reset stylesheet is _very_ fine, if there even is a line. A normalizer is probably _slightly_ more opinionated than a reset stylesheet. In the end, the difference isn't really important. If you need a reset stylesheet, normalizer will probably do just as well.

The line is not fine. Resets don't apply any styling, normalizers do. Normalizers keep the overall styling, like the margins of paragraphs and set them to an arbitrary value so all browsers will act the same. A reset is usually just: * { all: unset; }

None of that matters. Just set the properties you want the element you are using to what you want it to be. No need to think about any other elements except the ones you use and, when you set a property, it will be the same across all browsers. No need to give it a name or import it into your style sheet.

No thinking involved at all outside of your normal design method. No need to investigate the latest trends or activities by some online guy. Just do what you do.

> Just set the properties you want the element you are using to what you want it to be.

"Just". What I remember from that time was putting a button at relative 0,0 and it being at the top-left of the page in one browser, but was offset in another because that browser was adding padding/margin to <body>. I cannot say which was "correct" but it nonetheless pushed me to use normalisers, which prevented this kind of problem from ever coming up again.

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