CSS Reset – What Exactly Does it do?

CSS is a style sheet language containing rules and properties to format the graphical presentation of the elements of mark-up languages like HTML. Different web browsers have different default values of their elements that display on the output interface. The “CSS reset” is used to reset the values of browsers’ HTML elements.

What Exactly is CSS Reset?

A CSS reset is a set of rules containing CSS properties that reset the styling of elements of an HTML document. CSS reset refers to a style sheet containing CSS rules or properties that, when added to an HTML document, change the web browser’s default CSS values to their minimum possible values. The CSS reset style sheets are exactly like typical CSS documents. The CSS reset style sheets are very useful for developing websites.

What Does CSS Reset Do?

The purpose of the CSS reset is to change the default browser styling of different headings, lists, and other elements. It sets the CSS style properties to their minimum possible values (most commonly zero), and this changes the default browser’s style entirely.

Different browsers have different default styles like margin, padding, borders, font size, alignments, etc. A CSS reset style sheet proves to be very helpful in developing websites as every browser has its own styling, and the websites developed using them automatically set the style property values to the browser’s default values unless the CSS reset is applied to change the default values to zero.

Many people claim that using CSS reset stylesheets gives no benefits as it increases the developers’ effort and time investment because it resets each and every HTML element, and all the elements then need to be redefined rather than changing only the ones that actually require changes. But, it cannot deny the importance of using CSS reset stylesheets for removing browser inconsistencies. It keeps all the elements in the HTML consistent.

When the CSS values are set to the minimum values using CSS reset, the output interface looks like a set of paragraphs with no headings at all because the default values that define the fonts, sizes, and colors of headings and links change to the initial values.

CSS reset style sheets are added by developers in CSS style elements and they contain values like the following:

This sums up the nature and functionality of CSS Reset.

Conclusion

CSS Reset refers to the concept of adding a style sheet to the HTML document to reset the browser’s default values to the minimum possible values of all the elements of the document. The output interface displays without bold or colored headings and links. Rather, it displays consistent paragraphs. This is done to remove inconsistency in browser elements and to start styling from scratch.