Another great weekly roundup!
The website grader is just awesome! I’ve been using the SEO tool on Ranks.nl but that one only checks the keyword optimisation of a website.

I’ve noticed the recent buzz about CSS element resetters but what is exactly the difference between using a resetter or just using * { margin: 0; padding: 0; } to reset all margins and paddings.

I read once it had something to do with making input buttons collapse or break in some browsers if you don’t let browsers handle the input buttons by themselves but I’ve never encountered this problem.

The second arguement I once read is that the CSS parsing time increases when using the arterisk method because every element needs to be parsed with no padding and margin. But I think it doesn’t realy make a difference because browsers don’t take that much memory or CPU on a system. I think even a Pentium II with 600 MHz could render at the same speed with or without the arterisk method.

So the point is, I’m still not completely convinced about the usefullness of the CSS resetters in comparison to my own resets.

So I ask you, why should I use a CSS resetter (of course customised to my own liking)?

Rom: Thanks, I had a lot to cram into this week’s roundup.

As far as the global reset(* { margin: 0; padding: 0; } ) I’ve heard that it can break some elements.

From the comments on Eric’s site:

“Becuase you don’t want some elements (for example input, select and textarea) from being restyled (and break their appearance) in many cases.”

Using a reset of your own, or the one that Eric Meyer recommends seems the best solution, since it’s customized, and there’s no surprises to what gets reset or not. I think I’m actually using the one Eric previously mentioned, but I’ll probably upgrade to this newer version sometime soon.

Yeah, I did some reading on the subject and it seems that using the arterisk indeed breaks elements.

As I read the older articles Eric published I became enthousiastic to use a resetter. Just because it takes many quirks of browsers away makes it a valueable piece of CSS.