css Suggestion for 3 columns - css

I'm looking to create a header like:
<div id="header>
<span class="left></span>
<span class="center"></span>
<span class="right></span>
</div>
So have a header that's all inline. the left to all the way to the left, the right is all the way to the right, and the center is in the center of the header.
The challenge is #header is fluid. Any CSS suggestions. right now the best way I can think to get this done is with a table with 3 rows.
Thanks

Try this:
http://jsfiddle.net/z7k3J/
If you adjust the spacer bar in the middle of the page, you will see that all of your "columns" stay appropriately aligned.
The key is that all of the columns' widths add up to 100% and you float them all to the left (or right, it doesn't really matter). When your widths are percentage-based, they will adjust appropriately as the parent changes size.
If you only care about the text being right/center/left (and not images, etc), you could also make all of the columns 100% width and absolutely positioned, and then just use text-alignment:
http://jsfiddle.net/h7qB8/

Is there a reason that floating the left and right spans won't work for you?

Can you re-order the HTML to be left/right/center (or right/left/center)? If so, float the columns and use margins or borders on the center to hold it off the side bars.

This would be a good start:
<div id="header" style="position:relative;width:100%;">
<div class="left" style="position:relative;width:200px;float:left;"></div>
<div class="center" style="position:relative;float:left;text-align:center;"></div>
<div class="right" style="position:relative;width:100px;float:right;"></div>
</div>
This will center everything in the middle div and keep the other 2 divs to the side. Make sure the element containing the header div is set to position:relative;width:100%; as well.

You can also use display: inline-block on the inner elements, on the outer container do a text align center, and then on .left float: left; .right float: right. This would allow you to set a width on the spans, but keep them evenly spaced from the center. See:
#header {
width: 100%;
text-align: center;
}
.left, .center, .right {
display: inline-block;
width: 100px;
border: 1px solid green;
}
.center {
text-align: center;
}
.left {
float: left;
}
.right {
float: right;
}
You don't mention it in your question but have it in your tag - if you're able to use CSS3 then the possibilities open up more. You can use the flex box layout: http://www.the-haystack.com/2010/01/23/css3-flexbox-part-1/ or css3 columns: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS3_Columns

Related

CSS - aligning wrapped floating divs to the center

I am trying to create something like a gallery that shows different number of images per row based on the width of the browser. This has already been achieved using overflow: hidden in the outer div and float: left in the inner div.
However, what happens with this is that my images are always aligned to the left, leaving alot of whitespace on the right. How do I make it such that the gallery is always centered in the screen no matter how many images there are per row.
My code is on http://codepen.io/anon/pen/KzqAs
Thank you very much. :)
How about this: http://codepen.io/anon/full/mtBbF
HTML
<div class="container">
<div class="red box">red</div>
<div class="blue box">blue</div>
<div class="black box">black</div>
</div>
CSS
body{
text-align:center; /*You would need to define this in a parent of .container*/
}
.container{
display: inline-block;
margin: 0 auto;
text-align: left;
}
.box {
width: 300px;
height: 300px;
float: left;
}
Demonstration
You need to use an id(or class) on the main div. Set width: 300+px and margin: auto
Also your boxes should be with display: inline-block to allow them to begave "inline"
I have changed colors of the boxes a bit for better visibility.

Div is not moving nearby divs

I have something like this:
<div class="top">top</div>
<div class="container">
<div class="left">left</div>
<div class="right">right</div>
</div>
<div class="bottom">bottom</div>
Relevant code in jsFiddle
As you can see, between top and bottom divs, there is a div container. I want this div container to move bottom dive as much as is needed (and i don't want it to be a fixed value - that means if, lets say left container will get much higher - the bottom div will be pushed down as well.
How can i do that?
This is a simple seeming problem that ends up being kind of tricky. The above suggestion about position:relative vs. position:absolute are a good first step. After that you need to make some room for the set width right div:
.left {
height: 100%;
min-height: 50px;
border:1px dashed red;
padding-right: 50px; <---
}
Then float your right div in the space you made:
.right {
float:right; <---
width: 50px; (This needs to match the padding-right value above.)
text-align: right;
min-height: 50px;
height: 100%;
border:1px dashed blue;
}
Finally, put the right div before the left div in the html:
<div class="top">top</div>
<div class="container">
<div class="right">right</div>
<div class="left">left</div>
</div>
<div class="bottom">bottom</div>
(Tested in Chrome and IE.)
See: Right div fix width, left div extend to max width?
You can check out a fiddle here: http://jsfiddle.net/x3QfG/1/
Will that work for you?
Right now you're using absolute positions for the left/right div's, so you will always need to know the height in order to position the bottom div correctly. What you want to do is float these instead, then clear the floats in the bottom div. That way the left/right can be as high as their contents, and the bottom div will always appear below.
.bottom {
clear: both;
}
.left {
float: left;
width: 50%;
min-height: 50px;
}
.right {
float: right;
width: 50%;
min-height: 150px;
}
I've modified your jsFiddle accordingly, and made the right div higher to show how the bottom always appears below.
Use floats rather than positioning them absolutely. That will make your architecture very much fluid and flexible.
After you apply necessary float values to your .left and .right, use a clearfix hack to contain your floated elements within the container. Now whenever any of the .left or .right divs increase in height, the bottom div will be pushed down.
Make Container Relative and left and right absolute,and for positioning set width rather than using float.

Div element not aligning in the middle of another div element

This is my relevant page markup:
<div id="header">
<div id="logo">
Home
</div>
<div id="user_box">
test
</div>
</div>
And my relevant CSS:
#header {
width: 960px;
height: 110px;
}
#logo {
background: url('/assets/img/logo.png') no-repeat center;
width: 300px;
height: 110px;
float: left;
}
#user_box {
width: 300px;
height: 60px;
float: right;
vertical-align: middle;
}
Now, I want to position the user_box div in the vertical middle of the header div. After a lot of Google'ing and experimenting, I have learned that this isn't easy. Apparently, I can't vertical align a block element such as a div. So I'm looking for a different way to do this.
I saw the hacky display: table; method and tried using it, but it didn't change a thing. Also tried changing the element to an inline element like a span, but that didn't work either. I even tried using margin: auto 0; for some god awful reason, and that also didn't work at all.
So I'm asking for help. How do I vertically align this div inside my header div?
Thanks!
Set the line-height of user_box equal to the height of header
Working demo: http://jsfiddle.net/AlienWebguy/pyppD/
vertical align doesn't work with divs its for aligning elements in tables. In your case you could just use this
#user_box { margin-top:25px; } /*110-60 = 50/2 = 25*/
So I fiddled around with your code a little bit, and here's what I got: http://jsfiddle.net/3k8XE/
As you can see I'm using a table as the header, and applying the same id to each element, except the two inner divs have changed to td's. I've added an inner td to compensate the space between the two divs since they were originally set to float:left/right.
(Of course the borders are just to show what's actually going on here.)

How do you set a floating div's width to take up remaining space without pushing other divs down?

For part of a layout I want to make, I want to use three divs, all floating next to each other. The Left and Right have a max-width set, which works fine, but I want the middle div to expand its width to fill the remaining space. To clarify, the left and right divs may have a width of anywhere from 0px to the max-width, depending on what is in each, and I want the middle div to expand its width so that it takes up the rest of the space not used by the divs on either side.
The problem it's having now is that if there is a lot of content in the middle div, it's expanding and pushing the right div off to the next line instead of keeping it up with the other two.
Here's the css I have so far:
#left-column {
width: auto;
max-width: 200px;
height: auto;
float: left;
}
#middle-column {
float: left;
width: auto;
}
#right-column {
width: auto;
max-width: 200px;
height: auto;
float: right;
}
...and the HTML:
<div id="left-column">...</div>
<div id="middle-column">...</div>
<div id="right-column">...</div>
I think that this can be accomplished using a three-column, single-row table, but I absolutely do NOT want to use tables - I want to accomplish as much as possible by using pure css.
Thanks!
Classic Floats
If you order it:
<div id="left-column"></div>
<div id="right-column"></div>
<div id="middle-column"></div>
and you float the left column left, and the right column right, the middle column should fill in the remaining space. You will have some issues with margins, borders and paddings though.
Flexbox
If you don't need to support older browsers, you can use flexbox. With flexbox, this sort of structure becomes much simpler, and the markup doesn't need to change.
You will need to be able to select the parent element, so for the purposes of this demo, the code will be wrapped by <div class="wrapper">.
.wrapper {
display: flex;
flex-direction: row;
height: 200px;
}
.left {
background-color: red;
width: 100px;
}
.middle {
background-color: green;
flex: 1;
}
.right {
background-color: blue;
width: 100px;
}
<div class="wrapper">
<div class="left"></div>
<div class="middle"></div>
<div class="right"></div>
</div>
The height and widths are added explicitly so that the <div>s are visible. With actual content, the columns would automatically adjust.
I don't want to dredge up an old thread here but I was looking for a solution to my own problem and came across this and I thought I'd better share with Francisco...
Tables are a terrible idea for positioning layout, the main problem is that before a table will show/render in the browser it has to render it's </table> tag.
Could you imagine if Facebook's column content used a table for it's layout, it would take ages for it to render anything to the screen when checking your timeline for instance!
Another issue is that tables behave extremely differently in each browser.
Basically: <table> for layout = NO!, <table> for listing out rows of data or information = YES!

CSS: 3 divs - Resizing 2 outer divs automatically based on width of inner div/text

My problem is best outlined with this schematic/image which outlines how I want it to look:
!
I have a background image and 2 divs for text over the top of it (headline, and intro-text). I also have 2 divs on either side of the headline - these are for the white horizontal stripes.
My issue is that the headline is changeable in a CMS, and I want the horizontal white stripes to automatically fill up the space to the left and to the right of it, regardless of the headline's width.
I can't figure out how to make those 2 horizontal white stripes resize automatically.
Here's my HTML:
<div id="masthead">
<div id="headline-container">
<div id="left-stripe"> </div><div id="headline">{headline}</div><div id="right-stripe"> </div>
</div>
<div class="clear-both"> </div>
<div id="intro-text">{intro_text}</div>
</div>
And here's my CSS - ignore the widths specified for the left-stripe and right-stripe - they're just placeholders:
#masthead {
height: 260px;
}
div#headline-container {
width:960px;
padding:none;
}
div#left-stripe{
float: left;
background-color:#fff;
height: 3px;
width:500px;
display: inline;
}
div#right-stripe{
float: right;
background-color:#fff;
height: 3px;
width:100px;
display: inline;
}
div#headline {
text-align:right;
color: #fff;
font-size: 200%;
float: left;
display: inline;
}
div#intro-text {
text-align: left;
float: right;
width: 300px;
color: #fff;
}
Ideas? Please let me know if I can provide more detail.
I'm a bit too busy to actually test this, but this might give you some direction. i'm not sure the exact effect you're trying to achieve (see comment about finding a live demo someone made).
Regardless, this kind of fluid layout is a bit difficult to achieve reliably with straight CSS. To make it easier I would suggest making the right-stripe a static width.
This CSS solution MIGHT work... no promises.
markup
<div class="container">
<div class="headline-container">
<div class="left-stripe"></div>
<div class="headline">Headline goes here</div>
<div class="right-stripe></div>
</div>
<div class="content"></div>
</div>
CSS
//static width for right stripe
.right-stripe { width: 20px; }
.headline { width: auto; }
.left-stripe { width: auto; }
Using javascript would make it really easy though... here's how i would do it with jQuery. Again, I would make the right-stripe a static width to achieve this effect.
(same markup...)
..
js
var totalWidth = $("#container").width();
var leftWidth = totalWidth - ($("headline").width() + $("right-stripe").width());
$("left-stripe").width(leftWidth);
You can do this dynamically, with jQuery, for example. You take the full width of the 3 div's, drop the size of the inner div and assign dynamically the widths of the 2 outer div's in which the bar should repeat horizontally.
Basically, you will need:
$("#whole-div").width() - $("#inner-div").width() for the outer div's total width. Then, depending on your positioning of the inner-div, you assign values for the outer div's.
For example: whole div has 1000px, inner div has 200px and inner div is positioned 600px left. You will then assign 600px to the left div ($("#whole-div").width() - $("#inner-div").css('left')) and 200px for the right div ($("#whole-div").width() - $("#inner-div").css('left') - $("#inner-div").width()). Of course, you will then set a background-repeat property on the outer div so that the image repeats.
Hope that helps!
UPDATE CSS only fluid solution: http://jsfiddle.net/SebastianPataneMasuelli/XnvYw/1/
it uses the same background image twice, on #masthead and on #headline-container. except ton headline container the background is offset to match its left position relative to its parent element. then we only need one div.line behind it, which gets covered by the background image under the headline and copy, giving the illusion of a seamless image.
do you mean like this?: http://jsfiddle.net/SebastianPataneMasuelli/XnvYw/

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