Cascading CSS

I think you can get away with this: #independentblock * { reset defaults } to reset any properties that apply to everything inside. Not sure if that's helpful or not, but it would at least let you shut off all padding, margin , borders and whatever else you didn't want inherited.

does the "*" work in CSS, in all the usual browsers?

Yes, the * does work. Eric Meyer's been talking about interesting CSS tricks--try using a stylesheet with nothing but this in it: * {display: block;} It'll reveal all the HEAD elements, fun stuff like that.

Unfortunately, since the "clear" property pushes a block below all floated blocks - not just those in the parent element - you can't reliably use CSS for templates when the nested content may have its own styles. Use tables. (I would love to be proven wrong about this!)

Nicwolff-- Check out http://crossroads.net/misc/floattest.html I think you're wrong. It's not pretty, and may not do what you want, but the clearing effect does appear to happen within the parent--it doesn't clear everything.

Nope, the "clear: right" block there clears past all "float: right" blocks, whether they're in the parent div or not. http://angel.net/~nic/cleartest.html of the problem as it arises trying to do a two-column template with CSS, in which arbitrary content might come from a data store. I've just done http://fixprotocol.org/ in which the client was (ah, bliss!) dedicated to an all-CSS layout and I regretfully had to revert to tables for the main three-column template because any "clear" attributes in the content blew up the columns. I think this is a serious flaw in CSS, and as I said I'd love to find a way around it without tables.