Global White Space Reset

CSS Negotiation and a Sanity Saving Shortcut
http://leftjustified.net/journal/2004/10/07/css-negotiation/

Global White Space Reset
http://leftjustified.net/journal/2004/10/19/global-ws-reset/

* {
padding:0;
margin:0;
}



this rule cancels the padding and margin of every single element; something which has already been found to have the negative side affect of hiding the drop-down arrow of a select form widget in Firefox. That problem is very simple to fix, (re-apply padding to select select { min-width:1.5em; } – thanks Bryan) but it does bring up a good point — care should be taken when applying this rule to a page which contains forms as usability must remain paramount whenever styling forms.

* {
padding:0;
margin:0;
}
body {padding:5px;}
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, pre, blockquote, form, label, ul, ol, dl, fieldset, address { margin:20px 0; }
li, dd, blockquote { margin-left: 40px; }
fieldset { padding:10px; }


This will basically replicate the original layout of the page in Mozilla, only it will be cross-browser; no differences on lists or other troublesome elements in IE or anywhere else. That’s effective, but it’s far from exciting. What about if we replaced all the values with relative units (% or em)?


* {
padding:0;
margin:0;
}
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, pre, blockquote, label, ul, ol, dl, fieldset, address { margin:1em 5%; }
li, dd { margin-left:5%; }
fieldset { padding: .5em; }

Hey now, that’s a bit more like it! Now we have the basis for a site whereby all side margins are controlled by browser width and all vertical spacing is controlled by font size. Quick, simple and highly usable — this could easily be used as the basis for a solid but highly flexible fluid layout.


-------------

http://www.search-this.com/2007/03/12/no-margin-for-error/
One of the main causes for the many positional differences between layouts in various browsers is due to the default stylesheet each browser applies to give styling to certain elements. This usually involves setting default margins and padding to some elements to make them behave in a certain way.

various browsers will apply different amounts of margin to the body to give the default gap around the page. It is important to note that Opera does not use margins for the default body spacing but uses padding instead. Therefore we must always reset padding and margins to be 100% sure we are starting on an even footing.

Global White Space Reset

These days it is common to use the global reset technique which uses the universal selector (*) to reset all the padding and margins to zero in one fell swoop and save a lot of messing around with individual styles.

* {margin:0;padding:0}

Lists need a special mention here as it is not often understood that the default space or the bullet in lists is simply provided via the default stylesheet in the provision of some left margin. Usually about 16px left margin is added by default to the UL to allow the bullet image to show; otherwise there is nowhere for it to go.


If have been reset to zero, you will need to ensure that there is still enough room for the bullet to show. I usually allow 16px left margin (or padding) as a rough guide and that seems to work well. (You can use either padding or margin for the default bullet space.)

Drawbacks

First of all, certain form elements are affected by this global reset and do not behave as per their normal defaults. The input button in Mozilla will lose its "depressed when clicked effect" and will not show any action when clicked other than submitting the form, of course. IE and Opera do not suffer from this problem and it is not really a major issue but any loss of visual clues can be a detriment to accessibility.

You may think that you can simply re-instate the margin and padding to regain the depressed effect in Mozilla but alas this is not so. Once you have removed the padding then that changes the elements behavior and it cannot be restored even by adding more padding.

There is also an issue with select/option drop down lists in Mozilla and Opera. You will find that using the global reset will take away the right padding/margin on the drop down list items and that they will be flush against the drop down arrow and look a little squashed. Again, we have problems in re-instating this padding/margin in a cross browser way.

You can't add padding to the select element because Mozilla will add the padding all around which includes the little drop down arrow that now suddenly becomes detached from its position and has a big white gap around it. You can, however, add padding right to the option element instead to give you some space and this looks fine in Mozilla but unfortunately doesn't work in Opera. Opera in fact needs the padding on the select element which as we already found out messes up Mozilla.


There is no easy fix -- it's something you have to live with if you use the global reset method.


Conclusion

The global reset is useful for beginners who don't understand that they need to control everything or who simply forget that elements like forms have a great big margin in IE but none in other browsers.