I have lived in Austria, Australia, and now Austin. Knowing when to make a call or FaceTime can cause confusion. When I’m up and ready to chat at 10am in Austin, my friend in Brisbane is asleep at 2am the following day, and another in Vienna is packing up to leave work at 5p. 

Fortunately I do not have to think about where I and my friends are. A simple search on Google with “10am in Brisbane” will return “6pm in Austin the previous day”. There are also websites dedicated to time such as Time and Date. There is code that will take the two locations and figure out where they are in relation to a given day’s starting point: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Without it, my 4pm could be dark, whereas my friends’ could be midday or dusk. GMT is where our time starts. I start at GMT and add or subtract hours (and sometimes half hours). 

In my head, this is how I see CSS reset and normalizing. Different browsers will have their own default styling. A CSS reset will take away the default styles, and when I start my own code, I know exactly where I am starting from. I’m traveling from GMT, or a reset. 

As for CSS reset vs. normalizing, I like to think of it as the difference between going to Greenwich stark naked or in basic underwear; however, CSS resets won’t get you arrested.