Here's my 2 cents FWIW. Alan, I think we need to go back to your original post to see where some of this confusion stems.
> Jennifer. > > Setting padding and margin to 0 in 'body' will globally remove all padding > and margins until you change the situation. I will admit that simply quoting this and then elaborating on it *without* including your follow up could be considered somewhat misleading - however - your use of the term *global* in this case is partly responsible for the confusion (I personally wouldn't have used it in such a way since the word has implications, but it does depend on your everyday use with regards to CSS I suppose). Now to your follow up: > That is, if you do nothing else to padding or margins, they will never > appear. > As soon as you define a class or id and change its padding and/or margin, > that definition will be obeyed within that class or id. Anything outside > those definitions, that is in the body only, will obey the definition for the > body. i.e. No padding/no margin. What I believe you should have said, and perhaps probably even meant to include (as I note you have done so in a later post) was the addition of other *elements* (and *not* classes or IDs). Elements being the key word here - since the clear inference from the above is that the addition of any heading or paragraph element, for example, will in fact result in the global margins and paddings being applied (unless said element were to have a class or ID added, since any h1 or h2 or p etc. still fits logically INSIDE your definition, whether you mean it to or not). I believe that is why some of the other posters in this thread have disagreed with you and attempted to clarify. I think that's fair since what you communicated above is quite clearly inaccurate. This is what some might call semantics, but in the coders world semantics are significant. > What has happened is that some folks have read their own meaning into what I > said, which is that (apart from <HTML> the <BODY> is the prime and only > global element at the start of a document. No, they read a meaning into what you said based on *what you said* (see above explanation), although it seems clear from your follow up posts you never meant to imply what is, in fact, a logical interpretation of your words. That's not their fault. > When any other element is *added* within 'body' the situation *changes*. The > text within 'body' will still obey 'body' rules and anything else will set > its own rules and take over from 'body' and may or may not inherit attributes > from 'body' and may or may not set its own attributes. That's a fundamental > fact and is the 'change' from 'body' attributes that I originally spoke of. That's better! Indeed it is a fundamental fact but it is not what you originally said, only what you may have *meant* to say - there's a big difference. > I have never mentioned 'inheritance' up until this message, so I don't know > where that came from. Surely you jest? It's probably partly related to the flaw in your original post, and that word global - as I said above, it has implications! But more importantly, it was about trying to explain to someone who was still coming to grips with the affect the body tag has on other elements, and why padding and margin don't always inherit. Adieu Mark ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
