Welcome to the Treehouse Community
Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.
Looking to learn something new?
Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.
Start your free trial
A X
12,842 PointsWhat the heck is normalize.css in Nick's Intro to HTML videos?
Specifically in the https://teamtreehouse.com/library/how-to-make-a-website/css-cascading-style-sheets/use-id-selectors video Nick talks about how the normalize.css file will only be partially overridden by his main.css file. Nick introduced his normalize.css file a couple videos back without explaining much of what the heck it does so far, and at this point now he's saying that the cascading factor of CSS is only...partial for some reason? Why would main.css only override some of normalize.css, especially since it's put directly underneath the normalize.css file?
So what is normalize meant to show us, and how does it interact with main.css?
2 Answers
Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse TeacherWe had a discussion just a few days ago on this topic. You can see my explanation here.
https://teamtreehouse.com/community/questions-regarding-normalizecss
I wish I knew exactly where in the video he said something about "partial". I've listened a couple of times and haven't heard it. I did hear him say that we put it below normalize.css to make sure normalize doesn't overwrite any of our main.css rules.
Cindy Lea
Courses Plus Student 6,497 PointsMainly what normalize.css does is it equalizes the viewing on content in the web browser regardless of which browser you use. It takes into account the differences between the browser & tries to "equalize" the viewing area before more code is added.
A X
12,842 PointsCindy Lea Thanks for the info! Cindy how did you figure out that normalize.css does?
A X
12,842 PointsA X
12,842 PointsJennifer Nordell Nick mentions about a partial override of the normalize.css at 1:57-2:12 in the video: "And conversely, we want to make sure that normalize comes first and sets up a solid foundation for our custom CSS. In fact, we might be overriding some rules in normalize.css."
Ah, and thanks for the link, sorry I didn't see any forum posts specifically addressing my question when I searched for it prior to posting.
A X
12,842 PointsA X
12,842 PointsI appreciated your comment in the other discussion about how normalize.css "wipes out" all default formatting in CSS. I feel that really gave me a good idea of what normalize.css does and why.
Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse TeacherJennifer Nordell
Treehouse Teacher@neiklof You're welcome. Yup it just sort of gives us a blank canvas to play with. Which is really nice if you want to see specifically what your code is doing as opposed to what one particular browser is doing