Why can't the browser developers make the unstyled pages look better?

Question

I was looking at this page https://www.jsoftware.com/help/jforc/contents.htm and it's not styled with any css. And it looks so old school. Why not the browser software creators get together and make the default look and feel much more modern? For example, if I'm typing something in the word or Google docs, the font, the typography, the default text color, the TOC, all look so much better out of the box. I hope the browser creators make the pages look better without any styles.

mrspeaker · Accepted Answer

The problem is that ALL sites start "without styles" and then any CSS is added on top of this (even the site you linked to has some styling - margins, foreground and background color are all set in CSS).
Most websites do not restyle every element. For example, if you go into your browser and set the default color to be bright pink, you will find 1-in-10 websites won't set their own foreground color (because they know the default is black and forget to set it) and so the text will be pink. (I even started collecting some! https://gist.github.com/mrspeaker/1846b6b0e12c76f7eeb2)
If you changed the default styles then millions of websites would look really weird.
You can set your own defaults though and test it out!

mtmail · Answer

In this specific case the author exported a Microsoft Office document into HTML. The font is 12.0pt Times New Roman because it was specified by Microsoft office https://www.jsoftware.com/help/jforc/stylesheet.htm (you might need to 'view source').

Dunedan · Answer

This page isn't unstyled. It includes CSS to apply various styles. You might not want to blame browser vendors, but "Microsoft Office 11" instead, which was used to generate the site.

node-bayarea · Answer

https://www.jsoftware.com/help/jforc/contents.htm