Question

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS/inherit:

For non-inherited properties, inherit specifies a behavior that
typically makes relatively little sense.

I’m wondering what exactly is the page trying to say. So is it telling us that when we do inherit for a property which is non-inherited, the behavior is not standardized (may and may not work) ?

Because I’ve tried inherit value for border in FF, Chrome, IE, Safari, and Opera and they all work?

is it OK to use inherit value for ALL non-inherited css properties? are they part of the w3c standard?

Answer 1

So is it telling us that when we do inherit for a property which is non-inherited, the behavior is not standardized (may and may not work) ?

It works as expected in anything but IE < 8, but why would you want to make every property inherit? If you specify a border for a parent element E, then specify border: inherit for E *, then everything descending from E is going to get the same border.

is it OK to use inherit value for ALL non-inherited css properties?

You can do so for a specific property if you really want an element to inherit that style from its parent, but it doesn’t make sense for most designs in general to do it for every single property, unless your design is specifically about outlining every single rectangle with a thick red border. As an example, take a look at this catastrophic mess of a page.

are they part of the w3c standard?

If the spec lists inherit as a valid value for that property, whether it’s “non-inherited” or not (which means it isn’t inherited by default), then it’s technically supposed to work.