CSS Absolute Position - css

Evening All,
Had a question on whether or not the use of Absolute postioning in my context would be considered wrong by the CSS gods. Basically what I am doing is using it to position images for the header bar of my website.
We can use SO as a good example. So the main logo at the top of our page is StackOverFlow followed by a menu. On the right side we have Ask Question. Now pretend with me that both of those elements are pictures. Would it be considered within reason to absolutely position those so that we don't have to fight with any other CSS div positioning?
Cheers,
Mike

In my experience, you will generally find yourself disappointed with absolute positioning over, say, floats, meaning you'll find some nasty corner cases that will make the whole exercise a hair-pulling experience.
The one exception to that is relative+absolute positioning. When used properly that can be incredibly useful.
But to do a heading like on the SO site I would probably just use floats.
<div id="header">
<img id="left" src="image1.png">
<img id="right" src="image2.png">
</div>
with:
#header { overflow: hidden; }
#left { float: left; }
#right { float: right; }
Most of the time, that's problem solved.
It may be that only one of these needs to be floated. If its the one on the left:
<div id="header">
<img id="left" src="image1.png">
<div id="right">Some more content</div>
</div>
with:
#header { overflow: hidden; }
#left { float: left; width: 150px; }
#right { margin-left: 150px; }

I am guessing you will only need to absolutely position one of the two items you discuss. Leave the logo in normal page flow, and position the other item.
You could also use float:right on the one item, but that can be hard to troubleshoot across the spectrum of browsers.
I am not in touch with the CSS gods, but I say your plan of attack sounds like a fine use of absolute positioning.
Just be sure whatever wraps the two elements has position: relative
Absolute positioning can be really helpful when both elements are a different height

i would say probably easiest to make the right side image/div a float:right
that will let you shift things around fluidly

Related

can't get my CSS min height to work in 2 divs

I having a hard time with my CSS min-height, I have two divs and they are side by said, if one of them expands, I would like the other to expand http://www.willruppelglass.com/
As you can see the leftSideBar stops expanding at its min-height and the content div is expanded past its min-height.
CSS
.leftSideBar{
background:url(../images/leftSide.jpg) repeat-y;
float:left;
margin-top: -49px;
min-height: 591px;
}
.contentWrapper{
background-color:#ebebeb;
width:1411px;
margin:0 auto;
position:relative;
}
.content{
background:#FFF;
width: 1100px;
margin:0 auto;
position:relative;
min-height: 591px;
}
HTML
<div class="contentWrapper">
<div class="content">
<div class="leftSideBar">
<img src="images/leftSideTop.jpg" width="170" height="78" border="0" />
</div><!--leftSideBar-->
</div><!--content-->
</div><!--contentWrapper-->
The reason this is happening is because the content in the content div is pushing past the minimum height but the left nav not actually having content has no reason to get bigger.
My suggestion, even though it is not strictly CSS, I would use a simple piece of jQuery (because I noticed you are already using it) that will dynamically adjust the CSS property of the left div to match the right div. The jQuery version is here:
var div_height = $("#content").height();
$(".leftsidebar").css("height":div_height);
Please note that I have used an ID on the content that doesn't exist in your existing code so you will need to assign an ID to that div to work.
I hope this helps.
You have the first area floating left. Whenever you use float it can act different in various browsers, so I avoid that sort of stuff at all costs for main elements.
If you want your divs to be independent of each other, don't nest them. Better yet, control the positioning yourself using css properties such as "display" and "position". Once you get your divs separated from interacting with each other you'll find you have much more control over them individually.

Escape the bounds of a div container

Alright, I understand that the purpose of a DIV is to contain its inner elements - I didn't want to upset anyone by saying otherwise. However, please consider the following scenario:
My web page (which only takes up a width of 70% of the entire page) is surrounded by a container (a div). However, under my navigation bar which is at the top of the page, I would like to create w banner that takes up 100% of the width of the entire page (which means it will have to extend outside the bounds of its container as the container is only taking up 70% of the page's width).
This is the basic idea that I am trying to accomplish: http://www.petersonassociates.biz/
Does anyone have any suggestions for how I could accomplish this? I'd appreciate any help.
Evan
If you just want the background of the element to extend across the whole page this can also be achieved with negative margins.
In a nutshell (correction from comment):
.bleed {
padding-left: 3000px;
margin-left: -3000px;
padding-right: 3000px;
margin-right: -3000px;
}
That gives you horizontal scroll bars which you remove with:
body {overflow-x: hidden; }
There is a guide at http://www.sitepoint.com/css-extend-full-width-bars/.
It might be more semantic to do this with psuedo elements: http://css-tricks.com/full-browser-width-bars/
EDIT (2019):
There is a new trick to get a full bleed using this CSS utility:
width: 100vw;
margin-left: 50%;
transform: translateX(-50%);
I guess all solutions are kind of outdated.
The easiest way to escape the bounds of an element is by adding:
margin-left: calc(~"-50vw + 50%");
margin-right: calc(~"-50vw + 50%");
discussion can be found here and here. There is also a nice solution for the upcoming grid-layouts.
If I understood correctly,
style="width: 100%; position:absolute;"
should achieve what you're going for.
There are a couple of ways you could do this.
Absolute Positioning
Like others have suggested, if you give the element that you want to stretch across the page CSS properties of 100% width and absolute position, it will span the entire width of the page.
However, it will also be situated at the top of the page, probably obscuring your other content, which won't make room for your now 100% content. Absolute positioning removes the element from the document flow, so it will act as though your newly positioned content doesn't exist. Unless you're prepared to calculate exactly where your new element should be and make room for it, this is probably not the best way.
Images: you can also use a collection of images to get at what you want, but good luck updating it or making changes to the height of any part of your page, etc. Again, not great for maintainability.
Nested DIVs
This is how I would suggest you do it. Before we worry about any of the 100% width stuff, I'll first show you how to set up the 70% centered look.
<div class="header">
<div class="center">
// Header content
</div>
</div>
<div class="mainContent">
<div class="center">
// Main content
</div>
</div>
<div class="footer">
<div class="center">
// Footer content
</div>
</div>
With CSS like this:
.center {
width: 70%;
margin: 0 auto;
}
Now you have what appears to be a container around your centered content, when in reality each row of content moving down the page is made up of a containing div, with a semantic and descriptive class (like header, mainContent, etc.), with a "center" class inside of it.
With that set up, making the header appear to "break out of the container div" is as easy as:
.header {
background-color: navy;
}
And the color reaches to the edges of the page. If for some reason you want the content itself to stretch across the page, you could do:
.header .center {
width: auto;
}
And that style would override the .center style, and make the header's content extend to the edges of the page.
Good luck!
The more semantically correct way of doing this is to put your header outside of your main container, avoiding the position:absolute.
Example:
<html>
<head>
<title>A title</title>
<style type="text/css">
.main-content {
width: 70%;
margin: 0 auto;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<header><!-- Some header stuff --></header>
<section class="main-content"><!-- Content you already have that takes up 70% --></section>
<body>
</html>
The other method (keeping it in <section class="main-content">) is as you said, incorrect, as a div (or section) is supposed to contain elements, not have them extend out of bounds of their parent div/section. You'll also face problems in IE (I believe anything 7 or below, this might just be IE6 or less though) if your child div extends outside the parent div.

Positioning elements CSS

I recently start to learn CSS and table less design.
After reviewing some tutorials now I am involved with converting PSD Mockup to XHTML and CSS.
Most often my problem is to positioning elements and containers.
for example this below design:
I am converting this to CSS and HTML.
I have no problem with styling Input elements.
about main layout it seems two columns layout , right ?
How do I style containers ?
I wrote this code It displays better here.
I divided my page to two containers and valued (float:left) to left container.
As specified in jsFiddle link elements on the left side container had come out of the box (I think its because of float).
I can't set containers position to absolute.
Now please help me to refactor and change my code. And please explain to me how to position elements right ?
i think a
<div style="clear:both;"></div>
before the </div> of the container will work.
edit:
http://jsfiddle.net/xNwAc/5/
Try and have a wrapping element to contain your two columns. with W3C code, you'll want to use floated elements. The elements don't have any padding, you can work on them yourself, but it's a very basic structure to follow:
The CSS:
#wrapper { width: 960px; margin: 0 auto; background: blue; } /* positions it center of page */
#left { float: left; width: 50%; background: red;}
#right { float: right; width: 50%; background: green;}
The HTML:
<div id="wrapper">
<div id="left"> Left content </div>
<div id="right"> Right content </div>
</div>
You have to set a new formating context on the container, with overflow:auto; eg.
I sugger you to read the specification which is very clear and useful.
As the exclamation point is not a part of the content you can place it as a background image.

Javascript's call ruin floating in Firefox

I have the page with the structure:
<div id="container">
<div id="header">top menu</div>
<div id="content">content</div>
<div id ="footer" align="center">
<div class="left">left part of footer menu</div>
<div class="right">right part of footer menu</div>
</div>
</div>
Css style:
#container {
position:relative;
height:auto !important;
height:100%;
min-height:100%;
}
#content {
padding:0em 0em 12em;
}
#footer {
position:absolute;
width:100%;
bottom:0;
}
.left {
float: left;
}
.right {
float: right;
}
That works fine in all browsers. But when I add
<script type="text/javascript"></script>
inside
<div class="left">
in FireFox(only) the part of footer after the script come up to the top - between header and content divs.
What's wrong with it?
UPD
This all was about wrong mark-up inside #content. And only FireFox didn't understand when I missed one of closed table tag:) Thank you guys, you helped me to sort it out.
The #footer has absolute position and is inside the relatively positioned #container div so I would expect this. Maybe try making container absolutley positioned.
Also I think your markup is not what you intended. There are one too many opening div tags.
change the #container height from auto to 100% and remove the extra lines for height.
The auto is messing up the calculations as it overrides the 100% lines due to the !important value
Since #footer's position is absolute, with bottom 0, it will be positioned relative to its first (non statically positioned) parent, which is #container. Essentially what's happening here is that #container is becoming mush less high, and dragging #footer with it.
That's happening because you have two height: settings in the css for #container (somehow the script tag triggers it to refresh) so the behaviour would be undefined.
If you're trying to make the footer stick to the bottom of the window, including as it's resized, I'd advise having a javascript function handle it, triggered by the window's resize event (it's fairly simple, see this question on javascript window resize event
You could try the CSS a different way with absolute positioning. I try and avoid float as it can lead to unexpected rendering issues. See this jsFiddle for an alternate approach. Working in IE6, Chrome12 and FF3.6 and FF4 for me.

CSS: Floating div to right causes container div to stretch full width of screen in IE

I saw a similar question here, and did not see an answer. I'm having an issue where an element is floated right, inside a parent div, and it's causing the div to stretch the entire width of the page in IE7. This does not happen in any other browsers (Firefox and Chrome). I've also posted pictures after the question, for reference. The HTML I'm using is below:
<div id="journal" class="journalIE">
<div class="title_bar">
<div>
Testing
</div>
<div class="actions"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
</div>
</div>
The CSS I'm using for these tags is below as well. One thing I noticed consistent between the other person's question referenced above, and my issue, is that both parent div's have positioning applied (person above has absolute, I have fixed).
#journal
{
z-index: 1;
}
.journalIE
{
right: 1px;
bottom: 18px;
position: fixed;
}
#journal .title_bar
{
background: #F3F3F3;
border: 1px solid #C5D6E8;
color: #363638;
font-size: 11pt;
font-weight: bold;
height: 20px;
padding: 4px;
margin-bottom: 4px;
}
#journal .title_bar .actions
{
float: right;
}
.clear
{
clear: both;
}
Notice that the 'actions' class is floated right. If I take away that float, my box looks like this. But with the float added, it stretches the entire screen, and looks like this. Is this a known IE bug, because it's not happening in any other browser, and it's driving me crazy.
For those wondering, I did have content in the 'actions' div, but have stripped away everything down to the root problem.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks very much.
You need a width: *A floated box must have an explicit width (assigned via the 'width' property, or its intrinsic width in the case of replaced elements). *
via: W3C
Do this
<div id="journal" class="journalIE">
<div class="title_bar">
<div class="Test">
Testing
</div>
<div class="actions"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
</div>
and then add a Css class
.Test
{
float:right;
}
should do it, let us know if it does not work.
MNK
I'm not entirely sure what you want, as you didn't explain what you wanted to do with the "actions" div, but if you wanted the "actions" div to float right next to the "Testing" div, I just tried making a separate .floatr class, or it will also work if you just apply style directly to div.
.floatr {
float: right;
}
with .floatr class, apply that to "actions" div:
<div class="actions floatr"></div>
I don't know why, but it seems to me that "actions" div is ignoring the float setting in the class you set in that manner. I personally prefer to apply multiple classes to divs, which allows me to reuse that class over other divs for which I want that effect, but I've heard that some browsers will ignore any classes declared after the first one. Oh well, I haven't run into that problem yet with major browsers...
Oh wait.
I looked over code again, and I think you just had a problem with how you set your classes. Your "actions" div was missing out on the action, try adding a comma to CSS:
#journal .title_bar, .actions
{
float: right;
}
I guess sometimes to figure something out you gotta apply effect directly to make sure it can behave in the manner you expect it to, and then probably figure it's some sorta syntax error if it does work. heh.

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