Is * {position:relative} a bad idea?

Question

Is this going to cause me untold grief if I stick it at the top of my stylesheet?

* {position:relative}

Answer 1

Is this going to cause me untold grief if I stick it at the top of my stylesheet?

Yes. You will not be able to work with absolutely positioned elements any more, for example - the absolute positioning will always be relative to the parent element, which is almost never the desired result.

I could imagine there are even more side-effects field of z-index settings.

Not a good idea IMO.

And no, position: static is not deprecated, after all, it is the default setting :)

Answer 2

Wildcards can cause performance issues when not used carefully. That would probably not be the case in your example, but it's a bad habit to develop.

But more importantly, it's rare that you can conclusively say you want any behavior to apply to all elements.

With relative positioning, you will at best achieve nothing and at worst create many headaches for yourself trying to troubleshoot things that would normally "just work".

Relative positioning definitely has its uses. Apply it when you need it.