I agree, it's great to be able to read it and actually know what it's doing. Much better than other resets which strip defaults.

Please don't use this file. Use it for inspiration and take the parts that make sense for your website, but don't just copy the entire file without examining it closely.

For example, this file disables the webkit text size adjustment on the iPhone. Text size adjustment is what makes most websites readable on the iPhone without excessive zooming / scrolling. You should disable it only if you are making a mobile optimized version of your website and the automatic text size adjustment actually causes problems.

  /*
   * 1. Corrects text resizing oddly in IE 6/7 when body `font-size` is set using    
   *    `em` units.    
   * 2. Prevents iOS text size adjust after orientation change, without disabling    
   *    user zoom.    
   */

  html {    
      font-size: 100%; /* 1 */    
      -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; /* 2 */    
      -ms-text-size-adjust: 100%; /* 2 */    
  }

No- in fact I'm sure the readme used to say "don't use this as a black box", instead use it as a starting point.

I believe that all of the CSS in there is the default CSS in at least one browser. It really intends to only normalize between browsers.

> There's a lot of code in here that most sites will never need. [...] Perhaps start with this then rip out the stuff you don't end up using?

It’s designed to be used as a reference. i.e. if my website uses an <em> element, I'll want to make sure I’ve ripped out those styles from normalize.css and placed them in my own CSS file. They will serve as a starting point. You should not be including the normalize.css directly on a page.

Personally, I prefer this kind of approach as opposed to a style reset. Style resets lose all visual information that originally came with the element. If a client wanted to use an <h4> but I didn’t style it in the first place it ends up looking like regular body text with no additional padding or margins. A normalise approach forgives me for my lack of forethought allowing an almost right for 90% of cases.

C'mon, it's CSS, you can easily remove that line with the textarea declaration and you're done leaving it to whatever is used by a browser. Or make it all serif, it's that easy.

I don't see many textareas sized by row/col attributes anymore. Usually they're set to an explicit height and width.

Rows and columns became meaningless and outdated the moment browsers added those little grabbers in the corners.

HTML5 Boilerplate uses normalize.css. See http://html5boilerplate.com/docs/The-style/

Uhm, the largest "html5 boilerplate" actually uses normalize. Normalize.css straightens the subtle differences in the default stylesheets for the different browsers. It is css only, not really a template. It is like giving different car manufacturers specs and designs to build a car. They all build the same car but slightly different. Normalize tries to make them look all exact the same (they still behave different though)

I have to respectfully disagree here - this is like saying you shouldn't use jQuery, as it will kill the idea of remembering basic JavaScript.

I'd rather just get shit done (tm) than spend time learning all the nuances of cross browser css.

On the one hand, true, but on the other, it'll let them get started developing their actual site, rather than dig through obscure browser differences - thus making work more fun and easier to learn. At least in my experience.