I find that defining the properties in the same order for every rule is a major help when debugging your style sheets.

It is a method I’ve never seen on any other designers site style sheets (even your style sheet!)
It is a concept that I came up with a few years back after the frustration of debugging style sheet after style sheet.

Here is an example:
#ruleOne{margin: 0, width: 10px; height: 10px; padding: 0; background: #fff; color: #000;}
#ruleTwo{margin: 0, width: 20px; height: 20px; padding: 0; background: #000; color: #fff;}
#ruleThree{margin: 0, width: 30px; height: 30px; padding: 0; background: #00f; color: #f00;}
(Above are common properties in a simple order for the sake of the example.)

You can see what ever property that needs to be tweaked can be easily located within the rule.
The rules become far easier to read. And Math; one of the number one culprits to most css bugs is easy to spot and calculate. (it’s amazing how many browser discrepancies really boil down to properly calculating properties in the rules.)

What I commonly see in style sheets are a hodge-podge of properties that are slapped together as the designer needs to add the rule property.

It is common for rules to look like the following:

#ruleOne{background: #fff; width: 10px; padding: 0; height: 10px; margin: 0; color: #000;}
#ruleTwo{padding: 0; margin: 0; height: 20px; background: #000; width: 20px; color: #fff;}
#ruleThree{color: #f00; margin: 0, background: #00f; height: 30px; padding: 0; width: 30px; }

No rhyme or reason. Just a list of properties inserted into the rules as the designer find the need to insert them not realizing that it is later difficult to debug.

Regards,
William

This should definately put me on the right track

Maybe red border first, then go back to the list

Thanks Swizec!

Amen to the big red border method. Possibly the single most useful trick I know in CSS (believe it or not!). Saved me from many headaches.

Learned the technique back in my Pascal days in the late 90’s, always useful and all newbies should learn to cherrish it.