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CSS CSS Layout Basics Getting Started with CSS Layout Why Vertical Margins Collapse

Why would normalize add a margin to h1 in the first place?

It appears that if no margin were added to the h1 in normalize, that collapsing margins would never be a problem in the first place?

I'm still getting the hang of this so any feedback is appreciated!

2 Answers

I understand browser inconsistencies. What I was trying to say was why not set the margin to 0 in the normalize.css file to prevent collapsing margins, But in hindsight I see that may throw off spacing in other areas.

Hi jaycode,

The margin is added in normalize.css to help smooth out browser inconsistencies. Each browser developer decides on a set of default styles to give each element in case you don't set any styles yourself in your own custom stylesheet.

Understandably, not all the browsers agree on the same values. The reason something would be included in the normalize file is to account for these differences and make sure it's the same for everybody.

So if the margin wasn't set in the normalize file then you would still have whatever margin was the default value and you would still get the margin collapsing. It would just be potentially different margin values in each browser.