Box Model Margins

They have: 36 posts

Joined: Oct 2004

I understand that if no padding or borders are set for an element then these attributes use a default value of zero, but what about margins? I know you can set them to auto so that a margin will be generated to fill any unused area inside the parent content "width", but what if margins are not specified?
will they also have a default value of zero, leading to the child elements whole element box width(margins+borders+padding+CONTENT) being made up of solely its CONTENT box.

I realize this is a newbie question and thank you all for your patience.

Note:Assume no padding in the parent.

Busy's picture

He has: 6,151 posts

Joined: May 2001

I'm not sure of the CSS specs but know HTML there are default margins/padding etc and these differ between browsers, sometimes 0, sometimes 3, some 5px.
It all depends on what, where and how.

If your example is a list then there will be default spacings (padding/margins ...), but if just a nested div then probably not unless it includes a heading tag or similar that has spacing by default.

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