about 'reset style' CSS stylesheet.

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1

There is an expression in Dutch which says (translated poorly :wink: ‘…to go on slippery ice…’ which can be used if someone dares to speak about something he or she does not fully understand.

That’s what I am doing right now, actually. In my ‘struggle’ to make some more or less complex ExpressionEngine driven Freeway sites work correctly in IE 6, 7 and 8 and Firefox under Windows I had to dive into the art of mastering handwritten CSS stylesheets. I think it’s interesting. Although very time comsuming.
Now this question. I discovered this article, searched for pro and contra articles on the web. And I don not know what to think.

Is this methode useful when someone uses Freeway? Or should I just forget about it? What is your opinion about this?

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2

Reset styles are very useful when you want to start with a blank slate
for the purpose of evening the CSS playing field among browsers and is
common practice among the code savvy. I think it’s an excellent
technique to familiarize yourself with even if you don’t always use
it. Keep in mind the decision of what to reset is a very personal
choice and there is no right or wrong answer; it’s not even necessary
to use it all. If you’re going to go this route with FW it’s
definitely going to be easier if - as you’ve already indicated - that
you write your own stylesheets in another app and integrate them into
FW. Dan J. has a good tut for doing just this sort of thing. I say try
it!

Todd

On Nov 8, 2009, at 12:25 PM, atelier wrote:

I discovered this article, searched for pro and contra articles on
the web. And I don not know what to think.
Reset Reloaded – Eric’s Archived Thoughts

Is this methode useful when someone uses Freeway? Or should I just
forget about it? What is your opinion about this?

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3

Thank you, Todd.

Is it correct to assume that ‘reset’ means preparing a stylesheet in order to ‘force’ all the deviant browsers to act as the ones that follow the standars rules?

You say there is no right or wrong. But how can one know? Just plain trial and error?

About these particulair ‘reset’ rules, what do you think of it?

And did Softpress already implement some (or all?) of these rules into the output of a FW generated website?

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4

On Nov 8, 2009, at 4:40 PM, atelier wrote:

Is it correct to assume that ‘reset’ means preparing a stylesheet in
order to ‘force’ all the deviant browsers to act as the ones that
follow the standars rules?

You say there is no right or wrong. But how can one know? Just plain
trial and error?

About these particulair ‘reset’ rules, what do you think of it?

And did Softpress already implement some (or all?) of these rules
into the output of a FW generated website?

The idea is to reduce the differences among browsers for things like
margins (e.g., lists, paragraphs), line-height and headings (h1 etc.)
just to name a very few. You’re effectively stating via CSS that this
is how I want all browsers to treat these attributes by default. You
can of course alter these things later as needed using other styles.

There’s no right or wrong because every designer has their idea of
what they want to be reset and what they don’t based in part on how
they like to work. It’s personal taste/choice. That being said there
are many general things that people tend to reset such as: html, body,
p, ul, ol, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6…and many others but you get the
idea. Personally I have a fairly long list of things that I reset but
that’s me.

I like to reset and I can’t imagine not doing it. Like I said, it’s
worth learning even if you don’t feel the need to always use it.

The default settings FW generates can be reset. For example, the


tag may have a default bottom margin of, I think, 12px and all the

etc, tags also have default values that can be reset to 0px if you prefer (or whatever you like).

Todd

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5

Allright, now I get the picture. Quite complex. But very interesting. Thank you for your explanation!

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6

It doesn’t need to be complex, you could start with something very
simple such as zeroing-out margins and padding for paragraphs, lists
and h1 etc. Once you get the hang of it you can add other elements as
you see fit. Here’s one of mine, <http://www.xiiro.com/demo/css_reset/index.html

.

Todd

On Nov 9, 2009, at 2:58 AM, atelier wrote:

Allright, now I get the picture. Quite complex. But very
interesting. Thank you for your explanation!

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7

Thanks. You are right, like all new things, It has to be tried out.

One question though. About Freeway. The tool of choice so far for me.

You wrote that FW has default settings. And that a reset CSS stylesheet tries to reduce the differences between browsers. But why is such a reset stylesheet not a standard element for FW? I never discovered it anyway.

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8

First, the IE6/7 'sheets FW generates already compensate for most
known IE issues. Secondly, the FW default values (margins/padding,
font-weight, line-height for example) for things like paragraphs,
lists or tags is perfectly acceptable for most users and yields
expected results. Meaning, people expect a space between paragraphs or
lists to be indented so for most FW users there’s no reason to expand
upon what’s already handled by the app., and it might even be
confusing for some. If you want more control beyond what FW already
provides that’s perfectly fine too, like I said, it’s a personal thing.

Todd

On Nov 9, 2009, at 10:15 AM, atelier wrote:

You wrote that FW has default settings. And that a reset CSS
stylesheet tries to reduce the differences between browsers. But why
is such a reset stylesheet not a standard element for FW? I never
discovered it anyway.

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9

OK. I find the FW generated stylesheet rather difficult to read, it differs from what I see in general. But recently I discovered this service Free Online CSS Beautifier / Formatter - Styleneat and find it useful to clean up the code from FW, and combine my external stylesheet with the (still existing) inline styles. Lot better. BTW styles like:

.f-sp { font-size:1px; visibility: hidden }
.f-lp { margin-bottom: 0px }
.f-fp { margin-top: 0px }
.f-x1 { }
.f-x2 { }
.f-x3 { }

are these part of the FW-reset styles methode? They are automattically genererated. Just a question.

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10

I don’t know what you would call them but they’re unique to FW and
seem to ensure a certain type of behavior regarding first and last
paragraphs and so on. They may also in some cases lay the groundwork
for IE fixes. I’m not sure.

That’s an interesting link, gonna bookmark that. Thanks.

I also find the FW 'sheets hard to read. It would be cool if FW could
format the CSS to something a bit easier on the eyes and more
traditional.

Todd

On Nov 9, 2009, at 11:22 AM, atelier wrote:

.f-sp { font-size:1px; visibility: hidden }
.f-lp { margin-bottom: 0px }
.f-fp { margin-top: 0px }
.f-x1 { }
.f-x2 { }
.f-x3 { }

are these part of the FW-reset styles methode? They are
automattically genererated.

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11

:slight_smile: Glad I could do something back in return.

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12

I emailed Softpress support a couple of weeks ago about this, and here is their reply re: .f-lp etc.,

…All of the “.fp-” class styles are Freeway-generated styles - and there is a reason why they are used.

The x1, x2 and x3 styles are fixes for Internet Explorer for PC (so you won’t see anything in them unless you’re viewing the code in IE).

Others, such as fp (for “first paragraph”) and lp (for “last paragraph”) ensures that the text in HTML text items will be placed as they should be when previewed in a browser.

Bearing in mind that none of these styles will invalidate any testing of the code, I recommend you leave them as they are unless you want to start getting into some serious hand-coding. They can be removed with the Source Code Snooper Action, but I think you’ll find that if you do there will be some strange results with how your resulting page previews in a browser…

hope this helps.
Steve.

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13

Thank you, Steve, it surely did help.
I had my thoughts about this, that they were needed in order to make the HTML work as expected.
About serious handcoding, I already was forced to do that in order to make my FW site work well together with ExpressionEngine. I discovered that this is very time consuming, and does not always give the wanted result. Even more when one works with a team on one project. So maybe after all setting up a site completely handcoded is a better choice. My 2cents.

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