Body padding and margin
Russ Weakley
02-Oct-03
How do you force content to sit in the very top left corner of the browser window? In the old days we used to use invalid hacks like:
<body leftmargin="0" topmargin="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0">
Now, it is far more common to see developers using CSS based methods like:
body
{
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
But why do you need margin and padding? The reason is that browsers use different methods to set their default indentation on the body element.
If body { padding: 0; } is used, only Opera (both Mac and Windows) will set items into the top left corner of the window. See sample 1 - body padding.
If body { margin: 0; } is used, all other standards compliant browsers (excluding Opera) will set items into the top left corner of the window. See sample 2 - body margin.
The best way to set items into the top left corner of the window is to use body { margin: 0; padding: 0; } which will work for all standards compliant browsers. See sample 3 - body padding and margin.
