Lesson 2.2 — Reading layout like a browser
Before a browser paints a single pixel, it wraps every element in four invisible rectangles: the content, its padding, the border around that, and the margin pushing neighbours away. Layout is nothing more than the arithmetic of these boxes.
If you can predict the size of the box, you can predict the entire page. That is why this course measures everything — spacing comes from a scale, not from nudging numbers until it “looks right”.
Notice this very page: the text you are reading is capped at 65 characters per line, the classic comfortable measure, and each paragraph sits exactly on the ruled baseline grid behind it.