Centered fixed-width layout with fullscreen-width backgrounds - css

I'm trying to code a layout somewhat similar to SO.
It has a centered container with typical blocks: header, navigation, content area and footer. This blocks have different background-color. The problem is, I want the background to be 100% of the screen width.
You can see this in SO's userbar at the top of the screen.
Also I made an example picture. Note, that there shouldn't be any vertical borders, they're just to show the content area.
I've checked SO's html source but it didn't tell me anything
So, what are my options?
My first idea was to make a wrapper div for each section which handles the background, and another content div inside of it with width:950px and margin:0 auto
But it seems to me very inefficient.
Is there a nicer way to make it?

I've ended up with this structure:
<body>
<div id="header">
<div id="logo-container" class="wrap">
<div>...</div>
</div>
<div id="navigation" class="wrap">
<div>...</div>
</div>
</div>
...
<body>
and the style looks like
#... {
background:#...
}
.wrap div {
width:950px;
margin:0 auto;
}
Thanks everyone.

What I do in cases like that is style the html or body with the main background color (the one for your content), then keep the header and footer out of the main wrapper and size down their contents as needed, so I'd end up with something like so (which I think is similar to what you're saying you did, but with a couple minor differences):
<body style="background: #000;">
<div id="header" style="width: 100%; background: #666;">
<div id="nav" style="width: 100%; background: #999;">
<ul class="navigation" style="width: 950px; margin: 0 auto;">
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div id="contentWrap" style="width: 950px; margin: 0 auto;">
Whatever content stuff, other divs, etc.
</div>
<div id="footer" style="width: 100%; background: #999;">
</div>
</body>
You don't really need extra wrappers if you have only a couple block level elements in your header and footer, so you end up with about the same number of divs as if you had them all in one wrapper. You can also keep their sizes in sync if you put them in one CSS call with the size. It might sacrifice a little bit in the way of CSS efficiency, but in my experience, it's a small enough trade off that it's not worth losing sleep over, since either the site is small enough that it doesn't matter, or large enough that there are better efficiency increases in places like the images, javascript, and server-side code.

Related

twitter bootstrap - is it possible to undo "container" margins

my html looks like this:
<div class="container">
<div class="header-content">
hello!
</div>
</div>
i've recently come into a situation where I need the 'header' to be 100% the window for a full-width background. usually i would do this css:
<div class="header-background-color">
<div class="container">
<div class="header-content">
hi!
</div>
</div>
</div>
unfortunately, i am fairly deep into a framework and can't wrap the container. i need to construct it within the container.
<div class="container">
<div class="header-background-color">
<div class="container">
<div class="header-content">
hi!
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
i can't figure out a way to accomplish this, and am wondering if this is possible.
if i use this css for header-background-color
background: blue;
left:0;
position: absolute;
width: 100%;
the element looks right, but the page flow is interrupted.
does anyone know if my target goal is reachable?
i made a bootply to illustrate this http://www.bootply.com/129060
You can use a child (>) selector to select the first container element and set its width to 100% and remove the padding.
.example-3 > .container {
width: 100%;
padding: 0;
}
This assumes you'll always have a wrapper around it with a unique class name (or use body if it's the first div), but this also allows you to remove the position: absolute which is causing the overlap and the height can stay dynamic.
See forked bootply: http://www.bootply.com/129065
I've added a button that inserts a paragraph into the div so you can see how it's not affected by changes in height.
Only thing I can think of is using a dumby element to maintain the vertical space (i.e. set the height), and then use absolute positioning on the full width content (as you mention). This is really ugly and won't be a good solution if the height of the content is dynamic.
See #content_dumby element in forked bootply: http://www.bootply.com/129063

Strechting Content to 100% with Twitter Bootstrap

At the moment I am doing the following to get a div stretch across the complete width:
<div class="container-fluid banner">
<div class="container">
<div class="row">
<div class="span12">
<img src="image.png">
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
In my example, I'm wrapping the content in a container-fluid to force the content to stretch to full width.
As far as I know, Bootstrap doesn't provide a better and easier way to stretch content to full width and my approach has some disadvantages. Are there better ways to accomplish this?
if you use some css reset so you have to look what you have done there with body tag, after that as it was said before use
.container {width: 100%}
You can change the container styles if you wish.
.container {width: 100%}
You would have to make other changes, of course; but whatever is done in CSS can be undone (well, almost everything).

Stack divs on top of each other in 2 rows without whitespace

I really need your help on this one:
Right now I have divs just on top of each other, filled dynamically with diverse contents so the heights are changing.
What I want to do now is to place them in 2 rows. With a fixed width and "float:left" this kinda works already.
My english is not the very best so pls take a look at my example picture first:
As you can see there is this whitespace because of the third div which doesn't start right beneath the first div because of div number 2 which CAN BE higher as the first div.
I now wonder if there is a possibility to automatically position those divs higher so that there is no whitespace (they always should start right beneath the picture which is above wouth the whitespace, left or right).
LIKE THIS:
I hope you kinda understand what I mean :D Thanks in advance for replys!
EDIT:
Code-Example:
<div id="content">
<div class="xyz">BLABLA</div>
<div class="xyz">BLABLA<br>morebla!<br>EVEN MORE BLA</div>
<div class="xyz">BLABLA</div>
</div>
<style>
#content {
width: 648px;
}
.xyz {
width: 303px;
float: left;
border:1px solid black;
}
</style>
Remeber, heights are always different!
jQuery masonry makes your life a lot easier.. don't reinvent the wheel, especially when you're facing a classic css problem.
this will do it...
<div id="content">
<div class="column1" id="left">
<div id="div1">...</div>
<div id="div3">...</div>
</div>
<div class="column2" id="left">
<div id="div2">...</div>
<div id="div4">...</div>
</div>
</div>
Then just style column2 styles by defining widht values in your css.
Thanks,
#leo.

CSS Appropriate Way to Center Content

I prefer working with CSS based design, but as more of a back end coder my CSS skills are a bit weak. When I get involved with layout, I tend to fall back on table based formatting because my mind has been warped by years of table based abuse. There's one particular problem that I always trip over. What is the best CSS alternative to:
<table width="100%">
<tr>
<td align="center">
content goes here
</td>
</tr>
</table>
I sometimes use:
<div style="width:100%; text-align:center">content</div>
But this doesn't seem quite right. I'm not trying to align text, I'm trying to align content. Also, this seems to have an effect on the text alignment of enclosed elements, which requires tweaking to fix. One thing I don't get is: why isn't there a float:center style? It seems like that would be the best solution. Hopefully, I'm missing something and there is a perfect CSS way to do this.
You are right that text-align is intended for aligning text. It's actually only Internet Explorer that lets you center anything other than text with it. Any other browser handles this correctly and doesn't let block elements be affected by text-align.
To center block elements using css you use margin: 0 auto; just as Joe Philllips suggested. Although you don't need to keep the table at all.
The reason that there is no float: center; is that floating is intended to place elements (typically images) either to the left or the right and have text flow around them. Floating something in the center doesn't make sense in this context as that would mean that the text would have to flow on both sides of the element.
I would recommend putting a <div> into your <td> and setting the style attribute to style="width: 200px; margin: 0 auto;"
The catch is that you must set a fixed width.
Edit:
After looking at the question again, I would recommend scrapping the table entirely. Just use a <div style="width: 200px; margin: 0 auto;> as I suggested and no need for a table.
Here is a good resource for centering using CSS.
http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/center
This demonstrates how to center text, blocks, images and how to center them vertically.
Where do you find yourself commonly doing this? For me - I am most often trying to center the entire design of the site, so I usually do this:
<html>
<body>
<div id="wrapper">
<div id="header">
</div>
<div id="content">
</div>
<div id="footer">
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
body {text-align:center;}
#wrapper {margin:0 auto; text-align:left; width:980px;}
This will center the entire design on the page at 980px width, while still leaving all of your text left aligned (as long as that text is within the #wrapper element).
Use display:inline-block to enable text-align:center and center content without a fixed width:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>Centering</title>
<style type="text/css">
.container { text-align:center; }
/* Percentage width */
.wrapper { width: 99%; }
/* Use inline-block for wrapper */
.wrapper { display: inline-block; }
/* Use inline for content */
.content { display:inline; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="container">
<div class="content">
<div class="wrapper">
<div>abc</div>
<div>xyz</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
d03boy's answer is correct for the right way to center things.
To answer your other comment, "Also, this seems to have an effect on the text alignment of enclosed elements, which requires tweaking to fix." That's the nature of how CSS works, setting a property on an element affects all of its children, unless the property is overridden by one of them (assuming the property is one that is inherited, of course).

Slicing a psd with div+css

I'm slicing a psd, and there is a part of the screen that will repeat with as many items as it needs, similar to the question list of stackoverflow.
It needs to have this structure:
Is it possible? How should the css be?
Thanks!
You could try the following:
<style type="text/css">
#container {
width:60%;
}
#content {
width:100%;
}
#user-content {
float:left;
}
</style>
<div id="container">
<div id="content">
<div id="user-content">
<p>This can change depending on what is in here.</p>
</div>
<!-- The rest of the page's content goes here. -->
</div>
</div>
This makes the "content" div fill the rest of the space that "user-content" doesn't fill. It will only be an issue when your content is taller than the user content... but that's a different problem :)
This is another possiblity:
<style type="text/css">
#container {
width:60%;
}
#content {
width:100%;
float:left;
}
#user-content {
float:left;
}
#page-content {
float:left;
}
</style>
<div id="container">
<div id="content">
<div id="user-content">
<p>This can change depending on what is in here.</p>
</div>
<div id="page-content">
<p>This should take up the rest of the space.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
The problem lies in your left div where you state "width can increase depending on the content". How is this width defined? The div to the right can expand to 100% of the remaining space but you must define the relationship between the left and the right divs by either providing a fixed width to the left div or providing a percentage to both that equals 100%.
Well, as you’ve probably seen, so.com used fixed width div’s to achieve your layout goal.
Obviously my first tries setting the width automatically failed, but maybe I’ve a useful workaround for you: use left and right floating of both boxes.
<div style="border: 1px solid #000000; width: 60%">
<div style="border: 1px solid #444444; float: left;">
some text
</div>
<div style="border: 1px solid #999999; float: right;">
foo
</div>
</div>
Of course this will only help if I understood your question correctly ;)
As far as I know the only way to give your variable width container a variable width and float it to the left is to give it {width:auto;float:left;}
But I don't know if you can do anything useful with this because if you have text or a lot of small fixed width items to put in this container, they will keep expanding out along the first line until they've filled the width of the outer div before going on to the second line. They won't fill up the whole height and then push outward gradually as the text gets too much to contain.
Just a thought - you might be able to do some nifty JavaScript (possibly using jQuery?) which sizes those divs like you need them.

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