The <p> is suggested in CSS Spec 2.1 to have a margin of 1.12em, and
in Spec 2.0, to have 1.33em...

But looks like Firefox and Safari both use 1em for it. And IE use
something less... maybe 0.5em

I wonder if there is a way to find out how the <p> is defined as a
default value in your browser?

One way might be to use javascript, but

alert(document.getElementById("ha").style.margin_t op)
alert(document.getElementById("ha").style.margin)

both won't show anything. ("ha" is an ID for a <p> element)

Summercool wrote:
> The <p> is suggested in CSS Spec 2.1 to have a margin of 1.12em, and
> in Spec 2.0, to have 1.33em...
>
> But looks like Firefox and Safari both use 1em for it. And IE use
> something less... maybe 0.5em
>
> I wonder if there is a way to find out how the <p> is defined as a
> default value in your browser?
>
> One way might be to use javascript, but
>
> alert(document.getElementById("ha").style.margin_t op)
> alert(document.getElementById("ha").style.margin)
>
> both won't show anything. ("ha" is an ID for a <p> element)
>

You need to get the current style of the object - the .style property
only contains styles which are defined in the element's style attribute
(or have been explicitly assigned to it in script).

See http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/getstyles.html for a useful
cross-browserish method of getting the current style of an element.

Jeremy

On Mar 17, 4:18 pm, Jeremy <jer...@pinacol.com> wrote:

> Seehttp://www.quirksmode.org/dom/getstyles.htmlfor a useful
> cross-browserish method of getting the current style of an element.

thanks for the tip.
so

function getStyle(el,styleProp)
{
var x = document.getElementById(el);
if (x.currentStyle)
var y = x.currentStyle[styleProp];
else if (window.getComputedStyle)
var y =
document.defaultView.getComputedStyle(x,null).getP ropertyValue(styleProp);
return y;
}

alert(getStyle("ha", "marginTop"))

will show "auto" in IE and an empty string in Firefox. If I add a
style for <p> as margin: 10px, then IE will show 10px and Firefox will
not show anything.

On Mar 17, 4:36 pm, Summercool <Summercooln...@gmail.com> wrote:

> function getStyle(el,styleProp)
> {
> var x = document.getElementById(el);
> if (x.currentStyle)
> var y = x.currentStyle[styleProp];
> else if (window.getComputedStyle)
> var y =
> document.defaultView.getComputedStyle(x,null).getP ropertyValue(styleProp);
> return y;
>
> }
>
> alert(getStyle("ha", "marginTop"))
>
> will show "auto" in IE and an empty string in Firefox. If I add a
> style for <p> as margin: 10px, then IE will show 10px and Firefox will
> not show anything.

and even if in Firefox, the getStyle is added these 2 lines:

console.log(x.currentStyle)

console.log(document.defaultView.getComputedStyle( x,null).getPropertyValue(styleProp))

for it to show in FireBug, nothing will be displayed.

Summercool wrote:
> On Mar 17, 4:18 pm, Jeremy <jer...@pinacol.com> wrote:
>
>> Seehttp://www.quirksmode.org/dom/getstyles.htmlfor a useful
>> cross-browserish method of getting the current style of an element.
>
> thanks for the tip.
> so
>
> function getStyle(el,styleProp)
> {
> var x = document.getElementById(el);
> if (x.currentStyle)
> var y = x.currentStyle[styleProp];
> else if (window.getComputedStyle)
> var y =
> document.defaultView.getComputedStyle(x,null).getP ropertyValue(styleProp);
> return y;
> }
>
> alert(getStyle("ha", "marginTop"))
>
> will show "auto" in IE and an empty string in Firefox. If I add a
> style for <p> as margin: 10px, then IE will show 10px and Firefox will
> not show anything.
>

You really want getStyle("ha", "margin-top"). This will work in both FF
and IE. If IE gives you "auto" rather than useful information, I'm
afraid I can't you find the actual value of the default margin.

Jeremy

On Mar 17, 4:40 pm, Jeremy <jer...@pinacol.com> wrote:

> You really want getStyle("ha", "margin-top"). This will work in both FF
> and IE. If IE gives you "auto" rather than useful information, I'm
> afraid I can't you find the actual value of the default margin.

OK, so I changed that to margin-top... and Firefox and Safari both
gave 32px when I have

* { font: 32px sans-serif; }

as my only style sheet content...

so looks like both FF and SFR use 1em as margin-top for the <p>
element....

IE, on the other hand, shows "undefined"... but that's good enough to
confirm that all these major browsers do not use the CSS 2.1
suggestion of 1.12em or 1.33em.

Thanks a lot Jeremy.

On 17 mar, 19:14, Summercool <Summercooln...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The <p> is suggested in CSS Spec 2.1 to have a margin of 1.12em, and
> in Spec 2.0, to have 1.33em...
>
> But looks like Firefox and Safari both use 1em for it. And IE use
> something less... maybe 0.5em


Which version of IE exactly? There are many differences between the IE
versions. FWIW, IE 8 beta 1 uses the CSS 2.1 spec. declaration of
1.12em.

> I wonder if there is a way to find out how the <p> is defined as a
> default value in your browser?

Install IE developer toolbar in IE 7: IIRC, it will return "auto"
also.
Set the font-size to 100px or some large number and then view the
background color against a grid or ruler on the side of the <p>. As
you noticed, some unspecified versions of IE will return "auto".

> One way might be to use javascript, but
>
> alert(document.getElementById("ha").style.margin_t op)
> alert(document.getElementById("ha").style.margin)

The above code would be good for inline style, not user-agent
(browser) default values.

Gérard