CSS Layout Tutorial

Starting with a new HTML document, let’s just start with our divs.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"
>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>Let's Learn Layouts!</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="container">

<div id="header”><div id=“logo”></div></div>

<div id=”content”></div>

<div id=”right_column”></div>

<div class="feature”></div>

<div id="footer">THIS IS THE FOOTER</div>

</div> 
</body>
</html>

Add content (text, images) to the divs.

<body>
<div id="container">
HTML
<div id="header"><div id="logo"><img
src="http://openclipart.org/image/90px/svg_to_png/170921/tikigiki_abstract-element-029.png"></div>THIS IS THE
HEADER</div>

<div id="content"><h1>Headline</h1>
<p>Halvah powder oat cake. <a href="#">Pie oat cake</a> candy halvah cookie topping. Tootsie roll
toffee faworki cookie ice cream. Jujubes jelly-o caramels. Dragée bear claw biscuit bear claw. Bear claw
brownie chupa chups ice cream gummi bears sweet. Toffee jujubes topping. Oat cake cake lemon drops jelly
beans marshmallow marzipan cheesecake lollipop tart.</p>
<p>Halvah powder oat cake. Pie oat cake candy halvah cookie topping. <a href="#">Tootsie roll toffee</a>
faworki cookie ice cream. Jujubes jelly-o caramels. Dragée bear claw biscuit bear claw. Bear claw brownie
chupa chups ice cream gummi bears sweet. Toffee jujubes topping. Oat cake cake lemon drops jelly beans
marshmallow marzipan cheesecake lollipop tart.</p></div>

<div id=”right_column”></div>


<div id="footer">THIS IS THE FOOTER</div>

</div> 
</body>
</html>

This is what it looks like if we preview the HTML document. The borders shows how the divs react
without any styling. Notice that by default they are displaying 100% the width of the page. That is
because by default, divs are block-level elements.

Create a stylesheet (CSS) file and link the file to your HTML page. Let’s begin by adding style to the
body and to the #container div.

body{
font-family: Futura;
}

#container{
width:800px;
margin: 0 auto;
background-color: #FAFCE8;
}

Notice that you do NOT need a # on
the body tag. The body is not a div, it
is a root element.

Also notice that margin: 0 auto; centers the #container div to the viewport & removes any space
between the very top of the page and the container.

Next, let’s style the #header div.

#header{ Because the image is in a div, it is taking up the entire
height: 80px;
border:1px solid blue;
width of the parent div, #container and pushing the
text-align: center; “THIS IS THE HEADER” text down.
padding: 10px;
margin-bottom: 5px;
}

This can easily be fixed by adding “float:left;” to the #logo div.

#logo{
float:left;
}

In the normal flow, each block element (div, p, h1, etc.) stacks on top of each other vertically, from the top of the
viewport down. Floated elements are first laid out according to the normal flow, then taken out of the normal
flow and sent as far to the right or left (depending on which value is applied) of the parent element. In other
words, they go from stacking on top of each other to sitting next to each other, given that there is enough room
in the parent element for each floated element to sit. This behavior is crucial to remember as you build your
websites.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/css-floats-101/

Now let’s style the #content div.

#content{
float: left;
width: 595px;
border:1px solid red;
}

When we highlight the #right_column div we see that because it is not styled, the div still has its 100% width. The
content within the div is being pushed by the content in the #content div.

Add styling to the #right_column div.

#right_column{
width: 190px;
border: 1px solid green;
float: right;
}

Notice the width of #right_column is
small enough to fit in the 800px width
we created for the #container div.

This is what happens if the width of
#right_column is too big to fit both the
#content div and #right_column. It get’s
pushed out and by default, the other
divs below #right_column move up.

This is why it is important to give your
divs widths.

Heights are not always necessary – it
depends on whether you want a
specific height to the div OR if you want
the content within your div to
determine the size of the div.

Now we add our .feature styles.

.feature{
float: left;
width: 150px;
height: 100px;
border: 1px solid grey;
margin-right: 10px;
margin-top: 10px;
margin-bottom: 10px;
padding: 5px;
}

Because the .feature has a
float, the #footer div has moved
up. It helps to think that by
default, HTML elements are like
magnets that will stick to the left of
the page.

We can solve this problem once we style the #footer div.

#footer{
clear: both;
height: 50px;
border: 1px solid purple;
text-align: center;
}

The clear property
specifies which sides of
an element where
other floating elements
are not allowed.

Let’s add a little love to the text in the .feature divs so that it doesn’t look broken.

.feature h3 {
margin-bottom: 2px;
margin-top: 0;
}

.feature span{
font-size: 11px;
}

By default heading tags have a
margin top and a margin
bottom. By specifying the
margin in the h3 tag we
overrode the default.

Now we are left with styling the little details. I want that image to be in the center of the
#right_column div. So let’s add a div around the image tag in our HTML page, with a little inline
styling.

<div style=”display:block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width:
175px;"><img src=“images/johnny_automatic_open_book.svg" height="90"></div>

Sometimes it is not the text that needs to
be centered, but the block as a whole.
Or, phrased differently: we want the left
and right margin to be equal. The way to
do that is to set the margins to 'auto'. This
is normally used with a block of fixed
width, because if the block itself is
flexible, it will simply take up all the
available width.

http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/c
enter.en.html

Now let’s style the li’s within the #right_column div so they aren’t so big…

#right_column li{
font-size: 12px;
}

“GREAT!” The smaller font
allows for the first feature
enough room to move up! We
can solve this one of two ways.

1. We can give the
#right_column a specific height
so that it pushes the .feature div
down. OR…

2. We can nest our .feature divs in a div with an inline style of “clear:both;”

<div style="clear: both;">
<div class="feature"><h3>feature1</h3><span>Tootsie roll toffee faworki cookie ice cream.</span></div>
</div>

Here we have all the divs highlighted. You
can see the features “living” in their new
div – on separate row.

One last detail left! Adding colors to our links in the #content div.

#content a:link, #content a:visited{
color: #333;
}

#content a:focus, #content a:hover, #content a:active{
color: green;
}

The first link is highlighted to show the
“hover” state.

CSS Layout Tutorial

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