css preflight

A CSS Browser Reset Derived From Tailwind’s Preflight, With Optional Added Enhancements and Utilities.

2
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CSS

CSS Preflight

npm
License: MIT

This is a CSS browser reset based on Tailwind’s preflight, optimized for non-Tailwind projects. Optional enhancements like smooth scrolling and other utilities are also provided (see usage).

Preflight

The following adjustments have been made to Tailwind’s preflight, located in styles/preflight.css:

  1. Tailwind-specific CSS variables removed.
  2. Tailwind postcss functions like theme() removed.
  3. Vendor prefixes (e.g. -webkit-, -moz-) from css properties have been removed, to avoid duplication
    from autoprefixer when used. Inline comments in the preflight.css source code indicate which of
    these have been adjusted and note the original existing prefix.
  4. system-ui fonts have been removed completely from font-family properties in exchange for
    either websafe fonts (e.g. Courier New for monospace elements), or removed completely (in the case
    of the original preflight’s font-family on :root).

Removing System UI Fonts

system-ui fonts can be problematic as they not only depend on the OS version, but on the language
settings of the OS as well. These have been removed as it’s felt they’re too unpredictable to be
left in as a preflight, and better left for a dev to intentionally specify them.

Installation

#pnpm
pnpm add css-preflight

#npm
npm install css-preflight

Usage

The exports are broken down into 4 main CSS files. Completely
unprocessed so it’s up to the dev to pass them through optimizations like
Autoprefixer and minification.

Simply import these into the root layout file (like Layout.astro for example).
They should be imported first before any other CSS imports.

Possible Imports

import 'css-preflight'; // styles/preflight.css
import 'css-preflight/preflight'; // ALIAS: styles/preflight.css

import 'css-preflight/enhancements'; // styles/enhancements.css
import 'css-preflight/smooth-scroll'; // styles/smooth-scroll.css
import 'css-preflight/rem-same-px'; // styles/rem-same-px.css

Typical Setup

import 'css-preflight';
import 'css-preflight/enhancements';

Preflight

Tailwind preflight (with adjustments mentioned previously). Can either do a bare
css-preflight import, or use the more verbose option of css-preflight/preflight.
Both are exactly the same.

Enhancements

These are small enhancements added to the main preflight:

  • Adds text-wrap: balance on h1-h6 and blockquote. Helps prevent hanging words on newlines.

Smooth Scroll

Enables smooth scrolling to anchor points (e.g. #about). Disabled for prefers-reduced-motion.

Rem Same Px

Sets rem equal to 1px at the root for easier design-dev handoff. This calculation is done
using %, so the browser root font size will still affect fonts using rem for
accessibility purposes.

License

The repo falls under MIT licensing, contained in the LICENSE.md file.
Usage of the preflight.css file is also subject to Tailwind’s licensing (MIT), which is included
in the repo for reference.