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by simonw 618 days ago
That's a historic artifact. If a browser shipped new default CSS today it would break 30+ years of existing web pages.
3 comments

They should have brought in nicer rendering with one of the HTML versions, or with a flag.
Oh absolutely, that ship has long since sailed, it's just me lamenting a world that could have been if something closer to simple.css or tufte-css had been the norm.

Though with "reader mode" becoming more popular I wonder if there's a place for a browser with more opinionated defaults.

Hyperbole. It wouldn't "break" all the web pages, they would simply render differently.
There's a lot of sites between pure html and modern css. "Simply" rendering things differently would definitely break a lot of sites. Just imagine if browsers started defaulting to *{box-sizing: border-box;}.
I applied it to my site for a minute. Didn't break a thing. Just noticed a slight indent to a few things.