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necolas
normalize.css
CSS2011–2025
necolas / normalize.css

normalize.css

A modern alternative to CSS resets

Web Development
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
19Distinct people
19Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
53.5KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

A modern alternative to CSS resets

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 12:24:10 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year19 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2011-06-08 16:12:53 UTC to 2025-10-27 20:43:50 UTC.

012342011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20112012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20112011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20122012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303

What Hacker News says

19 sources
chrismorgan·Oct 25, 2025
This link is for the less-well-known normalize.css, https://github.com/csstools/normalize.css. It was last touched five years ago. The better-known normalize.css is https://github.com/necolas/normalize.css. It was last touched seven years ago. There’s a reason neither has seen more recent activity: they were mostly about making old browsers behave themselves, and they’re done. The stylesheets did have a little more to them, but it wasn’t what people actually cared about… and in some cases they were better off without them. I know I disagree with quite a few of their opinionated styles. Those old browsers are now long obsolete—half of them can’t even talk TLS 1.2, which basically excludes them from the modern web—so almost all of these stylesheets is obsolete, and you don’t need them. For the few pieces that might still have value, you wou
Read the rest
ld now prefer to use @layer or :where() for this kind of stylesheet, to make them behave more like user agent styles and avoid specificity conflicts.
In Normalize.css
FrontAid·Jan 19, 2021
I rarely use any of the popular CSS frameworks. Unless you are making a small(ish) website where the styling is not important, it is actually more work to customize an existing framework than to just use CSS yourself. But what I do use sometimes is a CSS reset like https://github.com/necolas/normalize.css And what I also use is this CSS boilerplate: https://github.com/frontaid/natural-selection (Disclaimer: I created it because I wanted to avoid the repetitive work of writing out all the selectors).
In Ask HN: What is your CSS framework of choice?
fireattack·Oct 25, 2019Submission

Ask HN: Why using “system font stack” when you can just use “sans-serif”?

I've read dozens of articles about how various websites set their "system font stack" up and tutorials on it [1-5]. From what I can see, the goal of "system font stack" is trying to use native system font when possible, particularly on mobile. And all these articles gave rationales about how it would be superior than some of the traditional stacks such as `font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif;`, which I fully agree. However, none of them seem to address an obvious question: why not just use "font-family: sans-serif;"? The only discussion I found that is on a "notable enough" project is this issue on normalize.css repo: https://github.com/necolas/normalize.css/issues/665 -- By assigning only "sans-serif", it will fallback to exactly that: system's default (san-serif) font. For example, there is no need to manually assign, say,
Read the rest
"Roboto" (a typical choice for any of these "system font stacks") on Android, to accomplish so: "sans-serif" uses Roboto already. Similar can be said for iOS etc. Wikipedia (desktop version, not mobile version) perhaps is the only "notable" site I knew that uses simply "sans-serif", and it seems to work flawlessly for years, on all devices. Another plus for just using "sans-serif" is that for ends that have finer control over fonts (such as desktop browsers), users can assign their own preferred fonts (therefore overriding the system default ones) and it will be immediately applied to the website. This won't happen for sites that have hard-coded fonts (including these "system font stacks"). Disclaimer: I'm not a designer, but a end-user who is relatively sensitive to fonts. [1] https://woorkup.com/system-font/ [2] https://markdotto.com/2018/02/07/github-system-fonts/ [3] https://furbo.org/2018/03/28/system-fonts-in-css/ [4] https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115012937927-About-the-system-font-s… [5] https://flaviocopes.com/css-system-fonts/ (Just search "system font stack to get more)
3 points · Open discussion
dennybritz·Jul 1, 2014Submission

Ask HN: What are your staple tools for creating a good UI/UX?

Ask HN: What are your staple tools for creating a good UI/UX? When you start a new project, which tools/plugins/elements are you using to make it beautiful and intuitive? Javascript libraries, CSS frameworks, fonts, other tools, etc... A couple to start with: - Bootstrap (https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap) - FontAwesome (https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome) - Normalize (https://github.com/necolas/normalize.css) - Chosen (https://github.com/harvesthq/chosen) - Angular (https://github.com/angular) - Parsley (http://parsleyjs.org/) - Subtle Patterns (http://subtlepatterns.com/) - Color Scheme Designer (http://paletton.com/) - Sketch (http://bohemiancoding.com/sketch/)
14 points · Open discussion
jakobe·Apr 13, 2014
The problem with reset.css is that people often use reset files made by other people without understanding what they do. For example, lot's of people use https://github.com/necolas/normalize.css, without realising that it will turn off automatic text size adjustment on the iPhone. That's fine if you actually test on the iPhone and make a mobile specific stylesheet, but if you don't, this will make the experience worse for iPhone users. So if you are going to use a reset.css file, you should do some research. Check on google what other people are writing about reset.css files, read comparisons of different reset.css files, test different reset.css files on different browsers, etc. But then you've wasted an afternoon NOT BUILDING YOUR PRODUCT. If you just accept that your website is going to look slightly different in different browsers, yo
Read the rest
u will realise that you don't need a reset.css file, and you will save a lot of time.
In What do you need to make a successful web app?
prisonguard·Mar 10, 2013
with some sass knowledge you are better of starting off with a couple of mixins and building from bottom up as compared to loading a fat css file you probably won't use 80pc of its rules. Normalize css[1] Bourbon[2] for utilities Neat[3] for the grid, Typeplate[4] for a nice type base. If you still need bootstrap style elements, you can get individual mixins and styles from one the bootstrap-sass projects[5] [1] https://github.com/necolas/normalize.css/ [2] http://bourbon.io [3] http://neat.bourbon.io [4] http://typeplate.com [5] https://github.com/thomas-mcdonald/bootstrap-sass edit: typo
In Bootstrap 3 preview

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