Fixed-width CSS floated 2-column layout equal heights problem - css

I have a page design I'm trying to implement with a header (menu bar) and underneath that a div with static width in css.
This div contains two divs - #contentArea and #menuArea, each of which have a header, middle and footer (header and footer have background images while middle fits to the content).
I've applied float: left and correct static width to #contentArea and #menuArea which works well, but I'd like to force these two to the same height. I looked to inline/inline-block solutions, but these seem to cause a lot of headaches for IE6/7. Unfortunately this design needs to display reasonably (not necessarily perfectly) back to IE6/FF3.
I've put a simple page demonstrating what I'm doing on my home server at http://home.theevilpenguin.org/c-Help/Index
Can anyone recommend a way to accomplish this or something to look into?
Thanks

You could try setting the attribute height: 100%; on the pageMenuArea div. That should make it the same height as the containing div pageBody.

Related

Making Flexible Height Containers for Responsive Design

I'm trying to make my site responsive and I'm having trouble creating containers divs where their height responds to the content within them. I've tried setting height to 100% but it's not working for.
Most of the content blocks are flowing below each other as I resize my browser but the containers aren't expanding to fit around them.
HomePage
Does anyone know do I have anything fundamentaly wrong in how the page is built that is preventing me from acheiving this?
Cheers.
You need to clear your floats. One example is .mission-statement. When you have multiple divs floating inside a div, the container collapses on itself. In your case, it's only partially collapsing because you have a min-height set.
You do this easily by doing something like this:
.mission-statement:after {
clear: both;
display: table;
content: '';
}
To affect all divs you can change .mission-statement:after to div:after
Images will automatically have a height of 100% of the image relative to the width and the percent tag is percent of the browser window. What you may want is a width tag that might be max-width=*px and let the height be determined by the image itself.
Instead of letting me write you an answer I will refer to a really good thread about this. The solution anyway is something called clearfix.
css - What is clearfix?

How do I make a DIV fill the page, without "position: absolute;"?

I'm trying to design a page layout that has a couple of headers, some main content, and a footer.
I want to use jQuery UI tabs widget in the main content with a border around it, so the div MUST fill all the space between the headers and footer, but also I want the content to expand if needed, off the bottom of the screen and a scrollbar appear so I can scroll down and view it.
Effectively, I want the minimum height of the content div to be the distance between the header and footer, but allow it to expand.
I've implemented the Sticky Footer method, which would work really nicely if I didn't want a border around my main content. In this jsFiddle example the div with the red 2px border needs to initially fill the page, and when you click the "Add Stuff" button to add more content which goes off the bottom of the screen it needs to push the footer down and show a scrollbar.
This is what I'm trying to achieve:
...with these rules:
Content needs to have a border.
Content needs to start off by filling the space between header and footer.
Content needs to grow beyond the bottom of the page, showing a scrollbar.
Footer needs to be pushed down as content grows.
Use only CSS, so that if content changes dynamically, everything adjusts automatically.
Work in modern browsers only, I'm not interested in supporting IE<8.
I've tried:
Absolute positioning, but this fixes the content to the size of the screen and doesn't allow it to expand past the bottom.
jQuery positioning, but this feels too much like a hack, and seems to be a bad way to fix it.
Using height: 100% and min-height: 100% in various places, but doesn't seem to achieve what I want.
Looking at other Stack Overflow questions around the same problem, but none of them seem to account for the content growing beyond the bottom of the screen.
Best I could come up with is http://jsfiddle.net/Atjxc/6/
Because the height of the window is variable, I had to use percentages only, along with absolute positioning.
.foo { overflow-y:scroll; position:absolute; left:0; top:10%;
width:100%; height:85%; }
.footer{ background:#ffc; position:absolute; bottom:0;}
I added a container for the main part, which shows a scrollbar when the content gets too long. I couldn't put borders because they have to be set in px values, and it messes up my percentage-based heights.
Well, You could just measure the actual distance that is between the header and footer, then set the min-height to that exact px.
like for eg, the distance between is 600px,
then set
min-height:600px;
height:100%
In this way, when you have content that fits way under min-height eg. 600px then the height shall be 600px, now when the content is added and it grows out of the 600px height, then the container div shall elongate in height to accommodate the added content which is covered by height:100%; .
And yeah, you can use "Measure It"(its a chrome/firefox extension) to measure the onscreen distance on the fly, its more convenient.
Hope this helps, and heres the jsfiddle http://jsfiddle.net/Atjxc/11/

2 div layout issue

I have a webpage with links down the left hand side of the page in a div that is floating left. I then have content to the right of that that is in a div floating right. The problem I'm having is that when the page is resized the content moves below the links.
I have tired putting the whole page in a wrapper div but when I did the links stopped working and I could not position the content where I needed too.
Here is the css for the wrapper div
#wrapper {
margin:0 auto 0 auto;
min-width:960px;
}
Floated elements will behave in that manner, since they're out of the page flow.
What you probably are looking for is a fluid two column layout.
The main problem is that you are giving the divs fixed widths so the first step is to change the widths of the divs to % or em.
Do this full screen to begin with, I would even go as far as creating a blank page with no content what so ever, just give the divs a different background colo(u)r. Do this as you then know the width of the content isn't interfering.
I would also float both divs to the left and maybe position them relatively to begin with.
I figured out the best way to go over the window resize issue is do like wordpress and even this site do: put balnk resizable margins around the page and make all the content fixed width.
"Liquid" style (with percents etc.) is cool but doesn't really look right most times, so the best thing is to build your page a little narrower than the full window and let different brawsers just change the margin size.
To do so I actually style the very html tag givin it a fixed width like 1000px or whatever and then margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; to keep it always centered.
EDIT:
Put this in your css
html {
width:66em;
margin-left:auto;
margin-right:auto;
}

CSS Container Height

I have a layout that should have a sidebar on the right hand side of the content area.
The sidebar should display 100% height of its container (#content), but for an unknown reason this content area doesn't have any height, therefore the sidebar isn't appearing.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Tom
Here's my code:
http://jsfiddle.net/tomperkins/G4f6u/
You are using height: 100% for all elements surrounding it, so it is inheriting the size from the html element. As it doesn't have any size specified, neither does any of the children relying on it.
Use this to make the html and body element fill the window:
html, body { height: 100%; }
I made a few changes dealing with the positioning of the sidebar - which I changed to absolute and added a min-height so that if the contents of it were empty it would still be visible.
Link
Not sure if this is what you were looking for - but it might help.
Set static height on your .content (in px) and you will see the sidebar
Here is an answer from a layman: The problem is that you've got two child <div>s which are both floated, meaning they are outside the regular flow of the document. This causes them to be excluded from the height calculations of their parent, in this case, the <div> with class "content".
You may fix this by adding a <div> after those two floats with style "clear:both" (I believe). This is not the "best" way to fix this particular problem, as it is adding non-semantic markup to your page, but it is fairly easy to understand and implement. Cheers!
Edit: see Container div ignores height of floated elements and then follow the link in the answer to read more.

My master page has empty space on the bottom and right side. Can I "center" my master page and set a background image?

Here's how it looks like right now:
my screenshot
Is there a way for me to center the area that has content, and place a repeating background image so the site doesn't look so empty?
Centering horizontally can be accomplished by wrapping the content you wish to center in a div, and applying the style:
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
to said div.
This will take care of your issue of space on the right. You can place a background image (repeating or not) using CSS as well.
Your larger issue will be the vertical centering. As far as I'm aware, there's (currently) no easy, cross-browser (including IE6/7) way of accomplishing that. I'd like to be proven wrong here by another user, though. :)
It looks to me like you just need some padding on the top and left in your content area.
Sorry I didn't realize your page was only a portion of the screen.
Why not splice your site into parts (divs) and use a fluid layout? Here is an article from Smashing Magazine about Fixed vs Fluid layouts.

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