why do browsers style a predefined margin into all webpages?

Asked 24/10, 2013 at 13:35 Answered 24/10, 2013 at 15:48

Why do all browsers style an arbitrarily sized margin on the <body> element of all webpages?* I'm not surprised by this, as I've been making webpages for years now, but I just assumed it was part of the spec, in the same way text inside <strong> should be bold. But, as seen in HTML5, HTML 4.01, HTML 4.0, HTML 3.2, and even HTML 2.0 and the RFC Definition, default styles are never even mentioned!

I can't find any definitions of HTML before 2.0, which was released upon the world in 1995, so why would all browsers insert the very specific 8px margin on all webpages*, especially in these days where every website removes it in the first few lines of CSS (even the HTML 4.01 spec's stylesheet does this) or a normalize/reset stylesheet? Sure, one could argue that ancient websites like the above listed HTML 3.2 spec rely on this, but they really don't look bad without the margin (try removing it with your browser inspector).

*** by "all browsers", I mean all versions of Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera, and Safari, including all related obsolete versions, betas, alphas, and nightlies, as of this question.

Seiler answered 24/10, 2013 at 13:35 Comment(1)

Good Question. I always wondered myself about this... – Cranmer 24/10, 2013 at 13:40

Browsers have to have a default rendering of some kind (author stylesheets didn't exist when HTML was first introduced and are still an optional extra today).

If there was no margin/padding on the body/html then the text would run up against the window border and toolbar where it would be very hard to read (which would be a poor choice for a default rendering).

why would all browsers insert the very specific 8px margin on all webpages

"But it looks different in Netscape" was a common complaint. Browsers copied the default rendering from each other to compensate for authors writing pages and only thinking about one browser.

where every website removes it in the first few lines of CSS

Not every website does. It's a common (but not universal) practise for sites which are going to include a stylesheet, but not all sites do.

Involutional answered 24/10, 2013 at 13:43 Comment(1)

I enjoy how informed and inarguable all your points are! It would be nice to see some examples, though; I rarely, if ever, see any still-maintained website use margins. – Seiler 24/10, 2013 at 15:25

The style sheet you mention at http://www.w3.org/StyleSheets/TR/W3C-REC removes the margin but also applies a padding to the body, moving the text away from the browser chrome for readability..

Browsers must have at least some default styling of HTML elements in order to convey hierarchy and structure.

Update: you can view user-agent stylesheets at the following:

Mozilla - http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/layout/style/html.css
Webkit - http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/Source/WebCore/css/html.css
IE - http://www.iecss.com/

Gifu answered 24/10, 2013 at 13:47 Comment(2)

This just states that browsers do this because "they must", but I want to know who said "they must", and why they all agreed on defaulting to 8px rather than assuming web designers can add it themselves if they feel it needs it. Note, also, that StackOverflow, among many sites, decides that centering the page is more important than giving it side padding, and just removes margins and padding altogether. You see this if you resize this window to be small enough to use a horizontal scrollbar – Seiler 24/10, 2013 at 14:16

I would imagine that this might have come from Sir Tim Berners-Lee when he developed the first browser back in late 1990 and then further iterated by Marc Andreessen in 1993 with the release of Mosaic/Netscape. Let's also remember that centered pages are by design, not default. Us designers and developers put that constraint on the web page when we put them together. Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_Style_Sheets – Gifu 24/10, 2013 at 16:29

To add a bit to the other answers, Web Browsers were marketed very differently in the 90s than they are today, and they also included different components. One such component included with the Netscape suite (remember, at this time, Netscape was the only dog in town, and you had to purchase it) was an HTML editor called Netscape Composer. I would imagine that when Microsoft released IE to compete, they likely had some similar feature, thus using their own default styling (though I don't recall what it was, I wasn't even thinking of developing back then). My best guess is that these HTML editor features contributed at least to some degree to the default stylings of the different web browsers.

Coyotillo answered 24/10, 2013 at 15:48 Comment(0)

Recommended topics

Hot tags