Equal height columns. By Matthew James Taylor on 17 October 2008 Creating equal height columns with CSS is not as easy as it may first seem. This tutorial highlights the display problems that occur with multiple column layouts, and then shows a simple solution that works in all common web browsers. The method shown here is 100% CSS hack-free, image-free and JavaScript-free so it can even be used on the most strictly coded websites. For those who want some action immediately check out my demo pages: 2 column, 3 column, 4 column and 5 column.
Also see my Perfect multi-column CSS liquid layouts - these use the same equal height column CSS principles as discussed below. The problem with equal height columns In the example above we have three columns each with a different amount of content. Separating the column content from it's background colour The first step to solving the equal height problem is to break it into smaller pieces that can be solved separately. Three column HTML div structure Three column CSS. All About Floats. What is "Float"? Float is a CSS positioning property. To understand its purpose and origin, we can look to print design. In a print layout, images may be set into the page such that text wraps around them as needed. This is commonly and appropriately called "text wrap". In page layout programs, the boxes that hold the text can be told to honor the text wrap, or to ignore it. In web design, page elements with the CSS float property applied to them are just like the images in the print layout where the text flows around them.
Setting the float on an element with CSS happens like this: There are four valid values for the float property. What are floats used for? Aside from the simple example of wrapping text around images, floats can be used to create entire web layouts. Floats are also helpful for layout in smaller instances. This same layout could be accomplished using relative positioning on container and absolute positioning on the avatar as well. Clearing the Float The Great Collapse Video. Dead Centre. CSS Media Queries. We've covered using CSS media queries to assign different stylesheets depending on browser window size. In that example, we changed the layout of the entire page based on the space available.
It isn't required that we make such drastic changes with this technique though, so in this tutorial we'll go over a design tweak with a smaller scope. We'll also cover the syntax for using media queries within a single stylesheet and more examples of that. The CSS media query syntax for calling an external stylesheet is like this: You may be familiar with the media attribute, normally being "screen" or "print" or even a comma separated list, like "screen, projection". Likewise, you can use more advanced CSS media queries like: You may use as many media queries as you would like in a CSS file. Example Let's say we have a fluid width design where the sidebar is 35% of the width of the page. In our example sidebar, we are going have a list of names of the Super Team which function as email links.
Types. When can I use...