Margin and Padding of <Body> Tag
I am writing a very simple HTML code which is listed below. Written in notepad and opening in IE-8 and Firefox (OS: Window Vista).
<html>
<body>
<table border="1"><tr><td>test</td></tr></table>
</body>
</html>
There is nothing special in the above code, It is creating some space from top left corner.
Which can be easily removed by using the following code
<body style="margin:0; padding:0">
Now i have find out the default margin and padding, which is 4 for Firefox and different for IE-8.
<body style="margin:4; padding:4">
I have some question on this scenario.
- Why this value is 4?
- From where this value is coming, is it saved somewhere?
- Can we modify (configurable) this default value?
- How these values are different for browsers?
Thanks.
Answer
- First of all, it's probably
4pxand not4. Second, that's just the way the browser vendor decided should be the default. - It is saved in the default browser stylesheets.
- You can, but you shouldn't. It differs with each browser. Google it!
How do I change default stylesheet on <insert browser here>? - There probably are slight differences, you should be able to tell... by looking at the default stylesheets :)
That difference is one of the main reasons we as designers use a CSS reset, to normalize all of the CSS awkwardness that follows different browser implementations.