[HTML5 Boilerplate homepage](http://html5boilerplate.com) | [Documentation
 table of contents](TOC.md)
 
 # The CSS
 
 The HTML5 Boilerplate starting CSS includes:
 
 * [Normalize.css](https://github.com/necolas/normalize.css).
 * Useful HTML5 Boilerplate defaults.
 * Common helpers.
 * Placeholder media queries.
 * Print styles.
 
 This starting CSS does not rely on the presence of conditional classnames,
 conditional style sheets, or Modernizr. It is ready to use whatever your
 development preferences happen to be.
 
 
 ## Normalize.css
 
 Normalize.css is a modern, HTML5-ready alternative to CSS resets. It contains
 extensive inline documentation. Please refer to the [Normalize.css
 project](http://necolas.github.com/normalize.css/) for more information.
 
 
 ## HTML5 Boilerplate defaults
 
 This project includes a handful of base styles that build upon Normalize.css.
 These include:
 
 * Basic typography settings to provide improved text readability by default.
 * Protection against unwanted `text-shadow` during text highlighting.
 * Tweaks to default image alignment, fieldsets, and textareas.
 * A pretty Chrome Frame prompt.
 
 You are free to modify or add to these base styles as your project requires.
 
 
 ## Common helpers
 
 #### `.ir`
 
 Add the `.ir` class to any element you are applying image-replacement to. When
 replacing an element's content with an image, make sure to also set a specific
 `background-image: url(pathtoimage.png);`, `width`, and `height` so that your
 replacement image appears.
 
 #### `.hidden`
 
 Add the `.hidden` class to any elements that you want to hide from all
 presentations, including screen readers. It could be an element that will be
 populated later with JavaScript or an element you will hide with JavaScript. Do
 not use this for SEO keyword stuffing. That is just not cool.
 
 #### `.visuallyhidden`
 
 Add the `.visuallyhidden` class to hide text from browsers but make it
 available for screen readers. You can use this to hide text that is specific to
 screen readers but that other users should not see. [About invisible
 content](http://www.webaim.org/techniques/css/invisiblecontent/), [Hiding
 content for
 accessibility](http://snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/hiding-content-for-accessibility),
 [HTML5 Boilerplate
 issue/research](https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/issues/194/).
 
 #### `.invisible`
 
 Add the `.invisible` class to any element you want to hide without affecting
 layout. When you use `display: none` an element is effectively removed from the
 layout. But in some cases you want the element to simply be invisible while
 remaining in the flow and not affecting the positioning of surrounding
 content.
 
 #### `.clearfix`
 
 Adding `.clearfix` to an element will ensure that it always fully contains its
 floated children. There have been many variants of the clearfix hack over the
 years, and there are other hacks that can also help you to contain floated
 children, but the HTML5 Boilerplate currently uses the [micro
 clearfix](http://nicolasgallagher.com/micro-clearfix-hack/).
 
 
 ## Media Queries
 
 The boilerplate makes it easy to get started with a "Mobile First" and
 [Responsive Web
 Design](http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design/) approach to
 development. But it's worth remembering that there are [no silver
 bullets](http://www.cloudfour.com/css-media-query-for-mobile-is-fools-gold/).
 
 We include a placeholder Media Queries to build up your mobile styles for wider
 viewports and high-resolution displays. It's recommended that you adapt these
 Media Queries based on the content of your site rather than mirroring the fixed
 dimensions of specific devices.
 
 If you do not want to take a "Mobile First" approach, you can simply edit or
 remove these placeholder Media Queries. One possibility would be to work from
 wide viewports down and use `max-width` MQs instead, e.g., `@media only screen
 and (max-width: 480px)`.
 
 Take a look into the [Mobile
 Boilerplate](https://github.com/h5bp/mobile-boilerplate) for features that are
 useful when developing mobile wep apps.
 
 
 ## Print styles
 
 * Print styles are inlined to [reduce the number of page
   requests](http://www.phpied.com/delay-loading-your-print-css/).
 * We strip all background colors, change the font color to black and remove
   text-shadow. This is meant to [help save printer ink and make the printing
   process much faster](http://www.sanbeiji.com/archives/953).
 * Anchors do not need colors to indicate they are linked. They are underlined
   to indicate so.
 * Anchors and Abbreviations are expanded to indicate where users reading the
   printed page can refer to.
 * But we do not want to show link text for image replaced elements (given that
   they are primarily images).
 
 ### Paged media styles
 
 * Paged media is supported only in a [few
   browsers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_%28Cascading_Style_Sheets%29#Grammar_and_rules).
 * Paged media support means browsers would know how to interpret instructions
   on breaking content into pages and on orphans/widows.
 * We use `page-break-inside: avoid;` to prevent an image and table row from
   being split into two different pages, so use the same `page-break-inside:
   avoid;` for that as well.
 * Headings should always appear with the text they are titles for. So, we
   ensure headings never appear in a different page than the text they describe
   by using `page-break-after: avoid;`.
 * We also apply a default margin for the page specified in `cm`.
 * We do not want [orphans and
   widows](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans) to appear on pages
   you print. So, by defining `orphans: 3` and `widows: 3` you define the minimal
   number of words that every line should contain.