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Dennis de Vries
9,440 PointsCSS reset and site performance
After watching Guil's video about adding and editing normalize.css as a css reset, I was left wondering: what is the impact on site performance?
To specifiy, in my mind loading multiple stylesheets means extra work for the browser encoding all that stuff. The browser goes through normalize first, then through the actual stylesheet. Sounds like double the work. It might be minor, and hardly noticable, but does it work like that? Does using multiple stylesheets take more time?
Also, I was wondering about editing normalize.css. Guil said something along the lines of removing rules you don't need. As I understood this is optional, but from a performance point of view: should you? It kind of makes sense to me, to keep the stylesheets as lean as possible so no rules are read or loaded when they shouldn't be.
Does it work like this?
Thanks!
3 Answers
Ferdinand Pretorius
18,705 PointsHi Dennis,
The impact it has on your site performance is nearly unnoticeable. This is because css gets cached. Different browsers have slightly different behaviour, but I haven't had many developers question this.
For optimization, yes you can edit the normalize.css file, after all it is just a normal css file and follow all the same rules, just be sure you know what you are doing when you modify it. You can also choose to minify it, or you can just download the minified version. Also you should be able to find a cdn that has a nomalize.min.css file.
Personally I have never edited the nomalize file. I use a cdn for smaller sites, and use my own minified version for bigger apps.
Hope this clear things up for you.
Unsubscribed User
20,193 PointsJust a little extra information..
If you have Google Chrome installed. You can use the network window inside the Developer Tools. This is a great feature that will allow you to see the load time for any css reset files you load into your page.
Ferdinand Pretorius
18,705 PointsThis is true, just remember to disable cache (very obvious checkbox) before you refresh.
Thanks Don. 1 up!
Dennis de Vries
9,440 PointsAh, yes. Kind of forgot about that, from an earlier treehouse course. Thanks for the advice!
nawlins34
24,783 PointsBtw, thanks for asking this question. I never really thought of asking, but it was pretty insightful!