CSS overflow positioning - positioning

This is quite a hard problem to describe so I think this diagram will help:
this is the setup-
.column {position: absolute; width: specific;} // each positioned with javascript
.post {position: relative; margin: specific; width: either 100% or specific;}
The question is if the first post exceeds the width of its column, how can I make posts in another column react and only start under the larger post? I only need it to work with the first one, and I don't think floating the posts makes a difference. I know this can be done with javascript without much trouble, but the posts expand on hover so it'll be much nicer in css. Is there any way to do this? Do I have to change the position style of the column? Or is it only possible with js?
I'd appreciate any response even if you can't think of a solution.

If you want a nice solution to multiple divs changing places and what not, then david desandro's masonry js plugin could be for you:
http://masonry.desandro.com/
You would have to utilize floats and let the plugin do the rest though. Apply the isResizable and isAnimated options (isResizable = true;, isAnimated = true;) when calling the plugin into effect and that should do it.

Related

CSS percentage width resize based on window

This probably was answered somewhere, but I can't find it :s
My question is about dynamic resizing of divs based in percentages.
Please look at code example below for the examples and possible solutions I made.
I ask if there is a better way to do resizing?
More detailed explanation:
Say I am writing a plugin that people can insert in their pages. (Imagine login form).
I go ahead and design the plugin's divs. I use media queries to achieve desired look for different devices. I work on a div straight inside of a 'body' element.
I use percentages for design (I like percentages). Say I set div to 80% width.
Now I give this plugin to the user. User goes ahead and puts the plugin's div inside of another
div that is 100px in width. Now everything looks awful. (80% of 100px is not a lot [80px]).
And of course I want user to put my plugin inside of whatever small-width divs that he have.
The solutions I saw so far to this problem was to create a holder div of certain width - say hardcode 300px. (ex - jQuery UI's Datepicker div; Meteor's login widget div). And then code to it always knowing the 300px width that I set before is not going to change.
But I don't know how good of a solution this is.
Moreover if I decide to go with hard-coding width, my plugin would need width of ~ 1000px. Because I want div to resize with media queries.
And if I go with hard-coding width (say holder div of 1000px width) and put it on a page, the page will have horizontal scrolling. And you cannot simply hide holder div (parent div) and have child to show at the same time. So this requires setting position:relative for holder (parent) div, putting it outside of window, and use same for child div - position:relative with same offset in opposite direction of parent offset.
I hope I am being clear so far and have not confused you!
A code example to illustrate what I am talking about:
http://jsbin.com/ifawez/18/edit
#cimmanon's comment cleared things out for me.
The problem is with lack of HTML/CSS "tools" available at the moment. Since responsiveness came into play fairly recently there are not a lot of CSS-native tools to accommodate changes in dimensions.
For instance media-queries exclusively work with width of window/document and not of other elements such as divs.
The solution I currently employ is using Javascript to determine width of a div and resize accordingly.
What I resize is the number of columns I want to display (I use Multi-Column module as suggested by cimmanon) which is pretty stable on webkit browsers. Since it is all done in Javascript (and jQuery's Sizzle) I keep an array of sizes like so:
var widthArray = [
{min:0, max:250, columns:1, secondary:false},
{min:251, max:350, columns:1, secondary:true },
{min:351, max:479, columns:1, secondary:true },
//more div sizes
];
// more code here
$(element).css({
"column-count": object.columns,
"-moz-column-count": object.columns,
"-webkit-column-count": object.columns
});
This is sort of like media-queries, but allows to work with width of html elements, not screen size alone.
Additionally I follow the way jQuery UI displays its components: using position relative/absolute.
.outer_div {
position: relative;
}
.inner_div_with_elements {
position: absolute;
z-index: 1010;
width: 99%;
float: left;
overflow: hidden;
...
}
.inner_components_displayable {
position: relative;
display: block;
}
.inner_components_hidden {
display: none;
}
So in Summary:
Media queries alone work with size of screen, and resizing of any inner element can be done in percentages to the screen size. They can be of huge help, but you turn into making your components work either with percentages based off screen, or specifying something like min-height and !important (as suggested by #Octavian)
Javascript manipulation of elements is currently easier, but is a costlier alternative (jQuery SIzzle is pretty slow)
A lot of libraries (ex. jQuery UI) use Javascript together with position relative/absolute to make sure their components/plug-ins will work nicely on all users' screen sizes.
I ended up combining position with javascript to emulate media-queries and multi-column design at the same time for responsiveness.
Thanks everyone who participated!
If I am reading this correctly, the main issue here is that it can potentially become too small based on where the code is located.
So why not just add a min-width property with !important? That way you can still base the size off of the parent container, but be sure that it doesn't get too small and ugly.
Potentially, you could even have a script to base the width off of the parent div and the min-width off of the screen size.

Flexible div positioning

I have several divs on a page that all have the same width but different heights. They are all in one div, the #note1PreviewDiv. They all share the class .note, which has the following css code (among other):
.note{
width: 160px;
padding: 10px;
margin: 10px;
background: #e3f0ff;
float: left;
}
I thought with float: left; they would all automatically align so that they are well aligned among each other.
Here's a preview of what it looks like:
Current state http://posti.sh/img/ist.png
And here's what the positioning should be like:
Desired state http://posti.sh/img/soll.png
I think you get the idea. Somehow it seems to me the height of the leftmost div pushes the other divs in the second row to the right - but that's only guessing.
Thanks for your help!
Charles
You're not going to be able to do this easily with CSS only.
CSS3 has a new feature called column layout, but browser support is not great. IE9 and below don't support it.
See http://designshack.net/articles/css/masonry/ and the last example for CSS3 solution.
Have a look at these js / jQuery options for easier implementation and browser support:
masonry
isotope
vanilla masonry which doesn't need jQuery.
wookmark
The kind of lay out you want is really difficult (not possible?) without going for a column based approach and adding additional block elements to represent each column. This obviously won't work with a flexible number of columns if you want a dynamic layout based on screen size.
That said, you could always use JavaScript to dynamically place elements into columns, and get it to match the screen size.
Is the height of the parent container given a fixed value? If it is, try setting the height of the parent container to auto, and the overlow propery to hidden.

CSS Float position issue

I know there are tons of questions regarding floats, but I seem to be a bit stuck on how to overcome this problem.
See my example here: http://jsfiddle.net/eE9WT/1/
What I am trying to do (or infact, trying to avoid) is the third .float div starting once the second .float div has started.
I would prefer the third div to fall directly underneath the first, making use of all space on the page. I'm aware that I could separate this into two columns, but I was wondering if there is a better solution without having to do that.
Believe it or not, within my 5 years of developing for the web this seems to be the first time I've been faced with this problem!
Thanks guys
This article would help in creating a Floating Box Layout: http://matthewjamestaylor.com/blog/floating-boxes-css-layout.htm
Also check out his other layouts, just in case they seem a better fit for your design!
You can add a rule for the second float to be right
.float + .float {
float: right;
}
I think this is the solution you are looking for:
JSFiddle
I moved all the div's to the left with float.
Made some space in the right side of the screen with padding-right on the container.
And then used the position: relative; to moved the second column to that space.
Display:inline-block;
zoom:-1;
More than float it do something for you. Only some rare case am using float. I know this is not meet your goal, I just explore my side.

How to remove huge gap in .blog-footer?

I'm having a problem with this page.
The .blog-footer div needs to clear on the right to correct for the height of the pictures introducing clear:right; causes the huge gap to appear on the page in FF and IE.
I'm at a loss, I've tried numerous ideas to get around the problem and at this point I've been staring at it too long to see the problem clearly. Can anyone help me out.
Thanks in advance.
Try using positioning. Add these to get you started:
#page-body {position: relative; width: 740px; margin-left: 20px;}
#sidebar {position: absolute; right:-190px;}
There are some subtleties, like getting the right behaviour when the content as a whole is not long enough to push the footer down, but I find those easier to work out than floating problems. With a fixed height footer like yours, that is easy to fix using a bottom margin on the page body and some more absolute positioning for the footer. You have gobs and gobs of extra divs to play with.
The clear attribute works relative to floating elements. So you can use it to make sure the footer closes the div below the picture, but the fact that your sidebar is floating as well actually pushes things down to the bottom of the sidebar.
So, as #Nicholas Wilson proposes, one solution is to position your sidebar using means other than float. And your layout doesn't appear to really require float for the sidebar.
In another direction, I noticed that you are currently hardcoding the heights of your pictures. Since you know these heights, another possibility is to forget about the clear:right for blog-footer , and add a min-height attribute to the asset-body, as in (this is for the beer festival)
<div class="asset-body" style="min-height:184px;">
Certainly not elegant or DRY, but if you had to you could do this or have javascript do it.

Is there a way to specify overflow in CSS?

I have been using a lot of position:relative; in my design, I just find it the easiest way to get everything where I need them to be.
However, the more items I add on my site (each one with their individual div) each one ends up further and further at the bottom of my page, so I have to manually position them higher.
This leaves a lot of empty space at the bottom, and I thought that adding height: 1000px; would limit the scrolling a bit, but this method doesn't seem to work.
I've even tried adding height: 1000px; to the wrapper and it's still not working.
How can I limit vertical scrolling, to the number of pixels I choose?
Thanks so much in advance.
Wait, so you are creating a div, using position relative to move the content of the div to the correct location, and the issue being that the div tag itself is still in the same place and creating a vertical scroll even though there is no content there?
If so you should look into floats.
Here are some tutorials.
Floatutorial
Learn CSS Positioning in Ten Steps
You can specify both the height and the overflow:
.someClass
{
height:1000px;
overflow:scroll;
}
The most common values for overflow are scroll, auto, and hidden.
To limit the distance someone can scroll, I think you'd need to use JavaScript. I'm not sure how, but I can't think of anything in CSS that would do that.
If you are looking to set when something should scroll instead of just be cut off or expand the tag, use overflow:auto;.

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