This site is a low down on what's going on in my life, what I'm working on, what I'm thinking about, and how I'm feeling about life in general.
Wednesday, 03 September 2008 11:40
It's hard to explain to someone who is new to css the impact of various properties on their layouts.
The best way is to go through creating a simple fixed-width, two column, page layout, with a header and a footer.
To start with, lets look at the html markup we'll use.
<div id="page_container">
<div id="page_header"><h1>My Site</h1></div>
<div id="page_content">
<div id="page_navigation"></div>
<div id="page_main_content"></div>
</div>
<div id="page_footer"><p>© 2008</p></div>
</div>
First we set the div to the centre of the page:
html, body { text-align: center; }
#page_container { margin: 10px auto; width: 900px; text-align: left; display: block; overflow: hidden; }
The text-align: center sets the page to the centre of the screen, when combined with the margin: 10px auto property assigned to page_container.
Currently, the page will align centrally and you will have 4 divs within the page container.
Let's format the header:
#page_header { display: block; clear: both; float: left; overflow: hidden; }
Clear: both ensures that no objects overlap the header.
Next the page content container:
#page_content { display: block; clear: both; float: left; overflow: hidden; }
And the columns:
#page_navigation { width: 200px; display: block; float: left; margin: 0; }
#page_main_content { width: 700px; display: block; float: left; margin: 0; }
Finally, the footer:
#page_footer { display: block; clear: both; float: left; overflow: hidden; }
So there you have it a quick and simple css page layout.