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Ask HN: Good CSS to reset styles for typography

11 points by ericn ↗ HN
I'm looking for a good CSS file that will reset all the styles on a page to something with high readability. I know Eric Meyers' reset.css, but that basically removes all style. I would like something that applies good styles to all elements that uses better typographic principles than the browsers' built in styles.

Using this as a base, I could then add styles to my own custom classes. But I could be sure that the basic styles are decent.

Does something like this exist? Where should I look?

Thanks

14 comments

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skbohra123
Try , blueprint css framework. It has nice typography, forms, reset and grid css.
bdr
Note that Blueprint is broken out so you can use the reset and typography stylesheets without using the grid system.
evlapix
I asked this same question a few months ago and got all of the same answers.

It's frustrating. When everything else we work with has modules and plugins, you would think CSS would be no exception.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1341274

I would love to take part in a project like this if I had a few partners.

morganpyne
If you use Compass to manage all of your CSS stuff it _is_ all modules and plugins. Write your CSS using SCSS or SASS. A large variety of really good quality premade mixins, frameworks and snippets are available, and the rest you can build yourself and create reusable libraries of code. Solve a CSS problem _once_. It's a joy to work with and makes CSS fun again. I get really grumpy when I have to handcode CSS now, it seems rather quaint and primitive.
evlapix
I've played with Compass/Less/Sass before and got turned off by the preprocessors. They all just gave me a bit more than I bargained for. But I hadn't realized that the plugin/mixin support had grown so much.

I'll keep this in mind while working on my next few projects.

ashedryden
I've never been able to find something similar. I tend to start off with a good font stack and then calculate vertical rhythm. I also tend to start with a larger base font and work toward a style with narrower line lengths.
Dylanfm
This will inform you, rather than provide a reset or framework: http://webtypography.net/ (and of course, reading The Elements of Typographic Style is worthwhile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Typographic_Sty...)

This series of blog posts by Mark Boulton are a good read: http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/five-simple-st... If you like that, maybe you should get his book: http://fivesimplesteps.com/books/practical-guide-designing-f...

I haven't used Baseline, but it looks like fairly good framework that has type in mind: http://baselinecss.com/