February 22, 2026
Hip to be square (dev edition)
International box-sizing Awareness Day
Developers celebrate the “box model” hero — and yes, they’re arguing about it
TLDR: A web guru crowned Feb 1 as box-sizing Awareness Day, celebrating a setting that makes on-screen boxes the exact size you expect. Fans want it on every element; skeptics warn against blanket resets—so the internet threw a mini party and a mini fight over how boxes should behave.
Happy International box-sizing Awareness Day! A front-end legend declared Feb 1 a love letter to the tiny web setting that keeps layouts from wobbling: box-sizing. The gist, in plain talk: with “border-box,” padding and borders tuck inside your set width, so your boxes stay the size you told them to. Devs cheered, citing Paul Irish’s classic post here and bragging they’ve used this on “everything, everywhere, all at once” for years.
But the comments? Oh, they’re spicy. One camp says “set it on every element” (including pseudo-elements) and let tools like Autoprefixer handle the nerdy bits. The opposition claps back: global resets are “lazy,” could surprise third‑party widgets, and “content-box truthers” insist the default is fine if you do the math. Performance hand‑wringing popped up, only to be roasted with “don’t worry about it” receipts. The “padding-box” option was called “kinda useless,” which ignited predictable dunks. Meanwhile, the meme lords declared “It’s hip to be square,” proposed groovy square sunglasses, and posted “Happy Boxing Day” jokes like it was a national holiday. The vibe: celebratory chaos. The takeaway: a humble CSS switch just sparked a full-on culture war—complete with puns, pride, and petty perfectionism.
Key Points
- •February 1 is designated as International box-sizing Awareness Day, tied to Paul Irish’s advocacy of using box-sizing on all elements.
- •The article recommends applying box-sizing: border-box to all elements and pseudo-elements via the universal selector and suggests a cascading approach for easier overrides.
- •Default box-sizing is content-box; with it, padding and borders increase rendered width, following a stated formula.
- •With border-box, padding and borders are included within the set width, improving layout predictability (e.g., for columns).
- •Browser support and prefix requirements are detailed; Autoprefixer is recommended to manage prefixes, and future use will be unprefixed.