nested div 100% height with sticky footer - css

I have a #main div nested within a container div that I want to fill the page down to the sticky footer. I've tried several angles, but can't seem to get it to work. If you don't use firebug, just ask and I'll provide CSS, etc.
Thanks.
site: http://www.dentistrywithsmiles.com

I've tried to do sticky footer many times and I never seem to learn that they are really hard to do. Your situation seems complicated and what you have now doesnt seem half bad.
I think I would use JavaScript to detect page resize and adjust the heights appropriately. Either that, or do something tricky with background images spanning both the footer and #main.
That's probably not what you want to hear but this is a tough problem for only using CSS - tougher than I would care to invest in.

With Jquery
http://css-tricks.com/snippets/jquery/jquery-sticky-footer/
or css only:
http://www.cssstickyfooter.com/using-sticky-footer-code.html
or
http://www.pmob.co.uk/temp/sticky-footer-ie8new.htm

Related

Website layout "breaks apart" when zooming in or out in browsers + a few other basic css questions

I'm pretty much as new to CSS as it gets and what I'm trying to do right now is just design a very simple/basic splash or landing page for a small business.
Here is the url for the site: My site
Now if you go on any browser, lets say google chrome and you zoom out or in (ctrl -/+) you will notice that the website layout starts to "break apart" in that all my divs just start shifting around. I obviously dont want this, and just want the site to remain the same when people zoom in or out, pretty much like all good sites haha.
I know it must have something to do with positioning, but I can't figure it our for the life or me. Last night I spent hours browsing similar questions but I can figure it out.
I'm not posting the code as to take up more space, I'm assuming since I gave you the URL you'll be able to retrieve the code from there.
I also have a few more, smaller questions:
1) if you open my site on chrome, or ie you'll notice that after the "terms and conditions" on the bottom of the page, the site ends, like it should. however, if you go on firefox, you'll notice that after the "terms and conditions" the background so to speak continues for a while. why is this and how can i fix it?
2) you'll notice that on different browsers positioning of elements is slightly different.
most noticeably if you look or chrome/firefox and then internet explorer 9 you'll notice that the "terms and conditions" are slightly higher than in chrome or ff and thus slightly touching the main content area. is there a way to fix this?
3) what is an efficient, effective way to center divs? For example, I want to center the "sign up" button perfectly centered relative in the main content area. ive pretty much just been eyeing it out and using relative positioning to center it. what is a more accurate way to center it?
Thanks, and sorry if these questions seem a little redundant. if you need any clarification on anything I'll be monitoring this question like a hawk.
Cheers
When you zoom in or out, you will encounter issues because of rounding and text rendering. It is a good idea to make sure the layout can survive a bit of stretching without breaking down.
Relative positioning is affected by issues mentioned in #1, and therefore unreliable.
Look into using something to remove the properties that the various browsers will apply. You could use a reset to give you something more workable or try to normalize the values to make them more even between browers.
For (horizontal) centering you have some options:
If you have a container with "text-align:center" it will center all child elements that are inline-blocks or inline.
If you want to center a block element, you can use "margin: 0 auto" to center it horizontally and remove vertical margins.
If you want to center an absolutely positioned element, you can use "left: 50%, margin-left: -(width of element/2)".
In addition to attempting to get rid of relative positioning, I would recommend that you do not explicitly set the height of the body element. Generally you want the elements to manage their own size, that way they will be more robust.
If you use "position: relative" now because that is what you know how to use, I would suggest you try using "float: left" (or right), or changing the display type (display: inline-block). That may help you get started in the right direction.
not sure for your points 1 & 2, but as for 3 what i've come to use is the following have the div i want to center and then use width : some-percentage; margin-left : 100-(some_percentage)*0.5 ;, where some percentage is the width I want to use.
a couple suggestions before go into fixing the zoom in and zoom out issue.
Don't use <div> to wrap around text.
Use <h1> tags for header
Store your CSS in a separate css file.
You defined the header section that's great, but do that for container and footer as well.
Comments! That would make the job much easier for people who try to help you.

Disadvantage to floating everything in a layout?

Everyone knows that there are problems with the float CSS property: there are text jogs in some browsers, you have to clear them to pull parent elements around a floated div, etc.
Let's assume I build a layout and float everything, and I'm careful to control for the browser-specific bugs. Are there disadvantage to using float for everything? Will the page take longer to render, or is there a better practice?
I'm trying to improve my CSS layout building technique.
#kevin; float is not a bad practice; it depends on how you are using it & what the needs of the design are. There is no need to use it on everything when there is no need & it comes from experience.
Every browser renders float correctly.
yes if you use clear:both in your markup like this
<div style="clear:both"></div>
it's increase your markup which increase your page loading time.
. SO, use overflow:hidden in your css to clear it.
Floating everything can make for a great deal of inconsistency; depending on how wide a screen is and how tall certain elements are rendered, you can end up with a hodgepodge of screen jag.
For example, widening the screen would cause more elements to fit on the top line, so they would jump up. Items not in the top line will slide down, and then catch on the corner of an element slightly taller than everything before it.
Float is a handy tool, but it's no panacea; use with caution. Make yourself a sandbox site, and use something like Chrome's developer tools, or Firefox w/ Firebug to see what results you get when floating it all.
I dislike using floats because of these clearing issues. I generally use display:inline-block, and for my IE6/7 stylesheet for the same rules, I put zoom:1; display:inline
With inline-block, block elements flow like inline elements, while behaving like blocks. This I feel is more intuitive than breaking out of the flow like floats do.
I use this kind of layout on my twitter client: https://timshomepage.net/twitter
And here's the uncompressed stylesheet: https://static.timshomepage.net/css/twitter.css

CSS Sticky Footers - two horizontal scrollbars?

I am using the CSSStickyFooter.com tutorial in my amateurishly imperfect attempt to get the perfect sticky footer working.
This is a specific question regarding the overflow:auto; style on the "main" div. With this in place, and when the window is narrowed by the user, I get a horizontal scrollbar halfway down my page. Can't this added scrollbar automatically appear at the bottom of the window like it's supposed to?
The reason you're getting the scrollbar in an odd place is because it is on the <div> rather than on the page. This is a result of using overflow:auto;.
overflow:auto; tells CSS that you want that particular <div> to get scrollbars (either horizontal or vertical) when it is too small to display all its content.
Therefore the direct answer to your question is No; you can't position the scrollbar elsewhere on the page, since it is attached to the <div>.
However, there may be ways around it.
Firstly, if you don't mind the content being clipped when the display is narrow, you can set the scrollbars such that it only gives you a horizontal one, and supresses the vertical one. You'd do that something like this:
overflow-y: scroll;
overflow-x: hidden;
Alternatively, there may be other ways to fix your code; CSSStickyFooter.com is quite well know, so if it works for others without this glitch, it can probably be made to work for you too. But we'd need to see a bit more of your code in order to help you further down that line.
I researched and tried many techniques for sticky footers and found this one to work great:
http://ryanfait.com/resources/footer-stick-to-bottom-of-page/
I had problems with many other techniques I used before that one. If using CSSStickyFooter.com is not a strict requirement for your project, I recommend you use the technique described in the link I referred to.

CSS div 100% layout

What is the most elegant way to achieve something like that with divs for IE7 and above and the other browsers(chrome,firefox,...)?
Thank you
My personal favorite is the jQuery UI.Layout plugin. It mimics the very flexible Java 'border layout'. Though there are pure css methods, I find they take a lot of tweaking, and have side effects on other layout elements. Whereas with the javascript plugin I was able to get it working in minutes.
Example
Take a look at this, look at the source, it will show you what's involved in a fixed / fluid layout.
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/style/layouts/item/css-liquid-layout-21-fixed-fluid/
You're probably looking for a sticky footer. Similar to faux columns, it looks like your desired result, but "cheats" in some sense. Other than that and tables, you won't be able to achieve that with CSS due to how height works (it can't inherit relative values, i.e. elements can't be set to 100% height if the parent has its height set to auto or a percentage value).

CSS Multiple Divs set to 100% Height

I understand this question is redundant but I was unable to locate an answer from my searches on here and other online forums. Here is my situation.
http://www.ci.fayetteville.nc.us/CityCommon/port/contact.html
On that page I have a 'separator' line that is to extend to the bottom of the page. Now, I have thrown in plenty of break tags to stretch the page. This shows that the background image (used as a footer images in a way) stretches to the bottom of the page fine. (That image is contained within div#content.
My question is how can I additionally get my div#rightContent to stretch just the same way?
I have my html, body and container heights all specific at 100% as well as another container div called #content. I am pretty stumped.
At the link you can view my source and hopefully point me in a good direction to achieve this. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Make one background image that contains both the outer borders and the right-column divider. This technique is called "faux columns".
See: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fauxcolumns/ and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faux_columns
There are various CSS hacks to get equal column heights. The only one (IMHO) that feels 'standard' is to use display: table, but that doesn't work in IE (of course) so makes it less ideal.
As such, I find the solution that works best is a bit of JavaScript. You are already using jQuery so that'll make it even easier. Here's one example solution:
http://www.cssnewbie.com/equal-height-columns-with-jquery/

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