Comments on: Reasons not to include ul, ol, li on your CSS reset

By: Darren

Darren — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 05:02:55 +0000

It is misleading to say, “Finally someone got the point’! Your point is not the same as Keif’s.

Your words, example and overall reasoning make a completely different point. You say, ‘I keep my list elements as it is regardless of each various browsers output difference’ so your clients don’t come back to you and ‘ask you why your ul bullets are not showing’.

Keif on the other hand is saying, ‘Have an overall reset for list elements but reset to sensible defaults for your site other than 0′.

You say leave it out and Keif says leave it in (but not 0). I agree with Keif: ‘The point is to get the expected results in all browsers’. Leaving it out does not achieve this.

The reason why others might use a complete reset css is so they only need to keep one copy of this file for all their sites and then have a site default.css that redefines the elements that require other default values for that site. I can see the reasoning for this too (if you have multiple sites on the same server).

By: admin

admin — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:11:34 +0000

Finally someone got the point.

By: keif

keif — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:42:06 +0000

I think people are missing the point (as it’s been said above) – you don’t have to zero out everything, then redeclare it later, you can just declare it in your “reset.css” or “unloaded.css” or “equalizer.css”

The point is to get the expected results in all browsers – so instead of ul,ol,li{ margin: 0; padding: 0}
You create:
ul,ol{margin-left: 20px; padding: 0 0 5px} etc. etc.

By: dan

dan — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:31:03 +0000

good point i totally agree on this. thanks a lot for sharing!

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 14:44:37 +0000

@ admin (comment #12)

The difference is, each browser has different padding and margins they give to UL, OL, and LI elements by default. If you do not reset them and redefine them, it is left up to the browser, which in more cases than we would like to admit, can break a layout.

That is why you should reset them.

But hey, if it is working for you, and you have not had any complaints, all the more power to you.

By: Phill Sparks

Phill Sparks — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 07:25:58 +0000

I have found that it is often useful to reset the styles and then re-establish a good base for the content area. I have a stylesheet based on the Firefox 2.0.12 user agent style just for this.

This means that you can style your template without having to worry about resetting everything and leave the content area behaving the same in all browsers still

By: admin

admin — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 05:07:56 +0000

so whats the point if you reset you list elements on your default and re-style or re-define it after? i leave ul, ol, li as it is and define margin:0; padding:0; when i use this elements. fyi i still you eric meyer’s reset but i drop those list elements. not all RTE offers good markup so i keep list element’s orignal look having bullets and numbered. “I only drop list elements not the whole thing on eric’s reset”

By: Shoghon

Shoghon — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 03:59:31 +0000

I use the reset and then restyle for the content div.
I find I use the reset li’s, etc for navigation both in the header and footer. For me this makes a smaller,more controllable and less confusing stylesheet because I am not styling and restyling in multiple places.

By: Jon

Jon — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:03:49 +0000

Thats a good point actually, I was using a reset stylesheet and it actually hindered my development so I dropped it and just reset lists on a case by case basis. Not each and every one obviously but used certain containers in my layout to determine the list styles.

By: Lindsey

Lindsey — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:46:44 +0000

Well, I wouldn’t say that’s not a reason to use them in your reset. You just need to remember to redefine them after the reset, especially for the main areas where they will be used by the client.

You don’t need to have clients put inline styles. If you properly redefine margins and paddings and list-styles-types for those elements after you’ve reset it, then there shouldn’t be any real issues.