Web Browsers Compatibility – CSS Selectors

By | March 28, 2008


Site looks different in Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox, Safari, OperaYour site looks different in Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox, Safari, Opera and any other web browser? If you’re a web developer, then you must know that making the web page to look exactly the same on every web browsers is a hard job to do.
Fortunately, there’s a solution to eliminate the differences in padding and margin for all web browsers. All you have to do is insert the following code into your CSS:

* {
margin:0;
padding:0;
}

I’m still using this trick. However, today I’ve found that there’s one disadvantage of using this. According to Christian Montoya:

It’s very heavy on the rendering agent to apply rules to every single element in the document, especially with large web pages, and this can also destroy a lot of good default styling, especially when you want to have default styled submit buttons.
I learned from KuraFire Network that it’s far better to have a complete list of default settings to apply from the beginning that targets the specific browser inconsistencies. I use something very similar to what is described at “Starting with CSS: revisited” site down: use my initial.css copy with the addition that I apply font-family:inherit; to inputs, textareas and buttons. It works great and there’s no need for the * selector.

Read his post here.

What about you? What tricks are you using?

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About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism career back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

Comments (1)

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  1. konfusion says:

    I use that – I do custom margin/padding anyways, so it’s not like it will make a difference. It still bugs me having to unbreak my site for IE though. IE8’s great, but most companies are still using IE5/6… I doubt they’ll switch to the newest.