When is it necessary to initialize or reset all tags using a wildcard * at the beginning of external CSS style?

Question

Sometimes I find some people use a wildcard * to reset or initialize all tags at the beginning of thier css. When is it necessary?

Answer 1

It is never necessary, some people just prefer to start from a known baseline rather then the various different browser defaults.

Slapping it in a wildcard isn't really recommended though as it can have unwanted effects on certain elements (such as form controls). This has resulted in slightly more complex resets such as Eric's or Yahoo!'s.

Answer 2

The reset files David referres to are really helpful to clean up the default markup of the different browsers, but keep in mind that you must hard-style a lot of elements. Lists, headers and other elements look really ugly without any kind of markup. I usually have on top of my stylesheet a couple of rules to rewrite some basic markup that every website uses anyway.

Answer 3

There's a good discussion of resets here.