absolute positioning is driving me nuts - html

can any body explain me the out put, which my code is genrating, as it
driving me nuts, there is no syntax error, i am following the tutorial
on you tube and i was able to genrate the right out put with this
code, but today i decided that i will understood this code fully, and
it driving me crazy
**Note: No syntax error, just looking for explanation about the out put, and please read the comment in the code
First look at the code html**
<html>
<head>
<title>TODO supply a title</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="menu.css"></link>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
</head>
<body>
<label for="show-menu" class="show-menu">Show Menu</label>
<input type="checkbox" id="show-menu" >
<ul id="menu">
<li >Home</li>
//This section is giving me trouble, please see below i explain my problem in detail there
<li >about
<ul class="hidden">
<li >who are we</li>
<li >what we do</li>
</ul>
</li>
//This section is giving me trouble, please see below i explain my problem in detail there.
<li >portfolio
<ul class="hidden">
<li >photography</li>
<li >web & interface design</li>
<li >illustration</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li >news</li>
<li >contacts</li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>
and this is my css
/*strip styling from the list*/
ul{
margin:0;
padding:0;
list-style-type:none;
position:absolute;
}
li{
display:inline-block;
float:left;
margin-right:1px;
}
//only this section of the code is driving me crazy, and in the explanation i type this section again and again. Please see below in there i explain my problem in detail.
li a {
display:block;
}
Problem if you look at the out put in this link
https://codepen.io/arif_suhail_123/pen/pwdYXp
i am confused about this-- look at the about section, i was expecting who we are and what we do, to appear as block element, as i gave li a {display:block} but they dont, they are appearing as inline block element or inline element, i am not sure,
but i get more confused when i see the next portion portfolio, as in there, all the li are appearing as block element, means photography, web & interface design and illustration appear on the next line, which i was accepting, after giving this style li a {display:block}
and after that i completly lost my mind when i added min-width property,
see the link https://codepen.io/arif_suhail_123/pen/ZyaZEj i changed nothing, i only added in li a {} min-width, so my style is this li a {display:block; min-width:140px;}
i still have the problem, what we do appear under the portfolio, this problem i desribed already(in the last paragraph), but after adding min-width:140px; i have new problem; if you look at the out put, web & interface design appear under the news, first of all i did not expected it to appear there, and second of all if you read the html code web & interface design is second li means why it appearing in this order first li -- photography, than third li -- illustration and second li -- web & design, under the news??
Can any body please explain me,
and last of all, what i understand about the absolute positioning is this, that it take the element out of normal flow, and put it back at the given position, i ran one example, and it confirm what i think may be i am wrong but have look https://codepen.io/arif_suhail_123/pen/LLOaXv
on this link third box did not appear, as i was expecting it, not to appear,
and about the block element, i understand that they suppose to appear on the new line.
see these two picture i think my question will become more clear.

Absolute Positioning - Take the Width of Parent
Ok so I looked through your code and I made a small example out of it. I took out some things to make the example more clear (and because of width limitations in these posts).
Ok, first, look at the background colors I put on both of the <ul> lists. Your sub-lists are in red. Your main <ul> is in yellow.
Now you are correct in saying that position: absolute; takes the element out of the "flow" of other elements in order to display them as usual. Absolute positioning takes a lot of special attention.
Run the code and look at the words "Who are we". Now this makes you think, why does "photograpy" appear next to it? What happened to "what we do"? Its behind it. The reason this occurs is because both of those lists are positioned absolutely under their parent element. Without giving anything like top or left they are just going to overlap eachother and the latter ends up displaying ontop of the previous list. Absolutely positioned elements don't care what is next to them or if they overlap something. They go where ever you tell them to and thats typically what absolute positioning is for. You tell it to break away from normal flow, and you give it a specific location to appear.
Play around with the code, delete "photography" and "illustration" and run it again. You'll see that "what we do" was there all along, just behind it.
Also see Russell's Answer.
ul{
margin:0;
padding:0;
list-style-type:none;
position:absolute;
background-color: yellow;
}
ul ul{
display: block;
padding: 5px;
background-color: red;
}
#secondList{
background-color: pink;
}
ul li{
float:left;
margin: 5px;
width: 120px;
}
ul ul li a{
display: block;
}
<ul id="menu">
<li>Home</li>
<li>about
<ul class="hidden">
<li>who are we</li>
<li>what we do</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li >portfolio
<ul class="hidden" id="secondList">
<li>photography</li>
<li>illustration</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>news</li>
</ul>

i am confused about this-- look at the about section, i was expecting who we are and what we do, to appear as block element, as i gave li a {display:block} but they dont, they are appearing as inline block element or inline element, i am not sure,
They do appear as block elements. I think the 'problem' is that you have li declared as inline-block elements. So you have block elements in a container set to inline block which effectively makes them display as inline-block.
but i get more confused when i see the next portion portfolio, as in there, all the li are appearing as block element, means photography, web & interface design and illustration appear on the next line, which i was accepting, after giving this style
This is being displayed the same, but the pen you entered has some kind of arbitrary width assigned to it. I'm not sure if it's because of the viewport settings or not, but try shortening some of the link names and you'll see it's actually displaying them the same as the other list. IE inline-block just like was specified.
Can any body please explain me, and last of all, what i understand about the absolute positioning is this, that it take the element out of normal flow, and put it back at the given position
Absolute positioning takes the element out of normal flow and positions it relative to it first positioned parent. The browser does not set aside space for the element either.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/position

I'm not 100% sure if I understood the problem but I'll give it a shot:
position: absolute;
makes the element ignore every single element. That is what makes them on top of each others. It just displays whereever you tell it to display. Wich is in the top left corner by default. And that's also why there is an
z-index: ...;
the z-index indicates wich layer the element is displayed on, for example z-index: -10; makes it on layer -10 and an element with z-index -9 would display on top I think(pretty sure, otherwise its the opposite) there are infinite layers btw
Hope this is what you were looking for

Related

Add space between text and line in <li><a> element

I've looked at various solutions in regards to this question, but they don't seem to apply.
This is my simple HTML code:
<ul>
<li>Home</li>
<li>Games</li>
<li>Trivia</li>
</ul>
How do I increase the space between the text and the line underneath it?
Use <br> or line-height css rules or simply do that to <li> css:
li
{ display:block;
height:XXXX;
}
Add this to your css:
li {
margin-bottom:5px;
}
Change 5px accordingly.
There are actually three or more ways.. here are the best three:
1. make that will make a brake between them, like you just hitted enter key.
2. You can use li{padding-top:10px;padding-bottom:10px;} or just in html using
ul>
li style="padding-top:10px;padding-bottom:10px;">Home
You know what I mean, I cant write it correctly, cause it will do ul in that post..
now, the third should be same as padding, but use "margin" instead

Need solution for this simple responsive design requirement - moving DOM elements on breakpoints

I have this doubt about the below responsive design.
As per the code below & shown in js fiddle as well, by default, on desktop, I want the anchor to display both "Name" & "Login Time". And when the resolution goes below 480px, "Login Time" shouldnt be displayed in the anchor, instead it should show up as the first list item in the ul.
So, to achieve this, I created an extra li as first element, which is hidden, when on desktop and as soon as resolution goes below 480px, it shows up and the "Login Time" in anchor is hidden.
My doubt is that, is this the right solution to get this thing, as for this, I need to duplicate the "Login Time" html in 2 places, although one is hidden at a time.
http://jsfiddle.net/M7J4q/2/
HTML:
<div>
<a href="#">
<p>Name</p>
<p>Login Time</p>
</a>
<ul>
<li>Login Time</li>
<li>Help</li>
<li>About</li>
<li>Log out</li>
</ul>
</div>
CSS:
a {text-decoration:none; display:block; background:#333; color:#fff}
p{ margin:0px;}
ul{list-style-type:none; padding:0; background:#999}
ul li:first-child {display:none}
#media (max-width:480px){
a p:last-child {display:none}
ul li:first-child {display:block}
}
According to me this is perfect solution.
And as far as I know, there is no other way to achieve this (only with CSS).
If you wish to use jQuery for this, it can be achieved using append and remove.
I prefer this CSS solution over jQuery.
Yes, you do have to keep the same code at two places but in such kind of functionality, it is acceptable.

html + CSS: Make position relative some other element?

I'm building a tree using lists in lists the ordinary way.
Now, what I would like to do is to have an extra label
that is absolute (horizontally) to the start of the outermost tree.
The effect I'm trying to achieve is the below, where the farLeft are labels
on each li (see similar html below):
I can easily do this, but my css will be unclean, to say the least, something
along the lines of:
/* each indentaion level is 20 px to teh right, so I need to offset */
ol.topLevel li label.farLeft { position absolute; left=-218px; ...}
ol.topLevel li ol li label.farLeft { position absolute; left=-238px; ...}
ol.topLevel li ol li ol li label.farLeft { position absolute; left=-258px; ...}
A usage could be like the below, but with more nesting levels:
<ol class="topLevel">
<li>
<label>Some niceLabel</label>
<label class="farLeft">Far left text</label>
</li>
<ol>
<li>
<label>Some niceLabel</label>
<label class="farLeft">Far left text</label>
</li>
</ol>
</ol>
The above sucks in many ways, notably I have to change value in plenty of places if I move something, and I have to make one line per indention level.
Is there a better way to solve this, perhaps make my 'left' being the left of my top level tree, or some other good html mechanism.
It might be the time to mention I'm a total css newbie, so I might easily have
missed somethnig completely obvious.
Here its fiddle link
http://jsfiddle.net/5YKFa/6/
css
ol.topLevel{
padding-left: 100px;
}
li{
padding-left: 20px;
}
.left {
position: absolute; left:0px;
}
html
<ol class="topLevel">
<label>Top Level</label>
<li>
<label class="left">Label</label>
<label>1</label>
<ol>
<li>
<label class="left">Label</label>
<label>1.1</label>
</li>
<li>
<label class="left">Label</label>
<label>1.2</label>
</li>
</ol>
</li>
</ol>
Is the 'farLeft class being used elsewhere on the page? If not, the easy solution would be:
.farLeft { position: absolute; left:0px; ...}
Absolute positioning should line up automatically with it's parent container at 0px. So if you wrap a relatively positioned div around it you should be able to adjust margins and whatnot to get the result you are looking for.
You don't need to specify where everything is in the dom structure, unless you only want it to apply there, and even then using an id on the tag would be a better solution. Good luck
You can probably just use a margin on each level of the nesting, so it will grow the deeper you go.

ul li elements have more space in between in IE than firefox

I am facing interoperability issues in IE7 and Firefox. li elements height is somewhat more in IE than Firefox.
Here is the attached image for more clarity.
http://img225.imageshack.us/i/interop.jpg/
Code for html and CSS:
<ul class="sa-progress">
<li class="sa-progress-current"><span id="intro_idx" >Select VPN Type</span></li>
<li class="sa-progress-default"><span id="local_idx" >Local</span></li>
<li class="sa-progress-default"><span id="remote_idx" >Remote</span></li>
<li class="sa-progress-default"><span id="vpn_idx" >VPN</span></li>
<li class="sa-progress-default"><span id="remote_dyn_idx" >Remote Users</span></li>
<li class="sa-progress-default"><span id="traffic_idx" >Traffic Profile</span></li>
<li class="sa-progress-default"><span id="review_idx" >Review & Commit</span></li>
</ul>
ul.sa-progress {
color: #333333;
line-height: normal;
padding: 7px 0 10px 10px;
}
ul.sa-progress {
font-size: 12px;
}
Please let me know what am missing here.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
ul/li is one of the more common cross browser differences that crop up as they both have different interpretations of their default rules.
You should look into using a css reset sheet to start off with such as:
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/3/cssreset/
This will apply consistent base rules to your formatting so that all browsers have a fair chance at matching.
Because you didn't start out with this reset stylesheet and then build your design on top of it you might find that applying it will make several other elements go a bit different when they react to the new defaults. I would say its better to fix these so they look right with the reset sheet and then you will have a consistent baseline to work from.
After that you still might have problems but from the css you have posted I think there are some more parts to it such as the double line spacing you have in some menu items.
If you are going to make these into menu items then a common way that I approach this kind of styling is to make the a tags display: block; and then work my spacings out from that. Try to keep your ul li stylings as lightweight as possible and work with other items you have (such as the container div for the menu and the anchor tags for the links).

How to make floating divs fill up space

I'm trying to create a "workflow" bar on a web page.
The items in the workflow might be of different lengths.
There might be enough items to fill the width of the screen, hence the flow needs to wrap onto the next line.
I'm using left floating divs to do this.
However, I'd like the divs to take an appropriate amount of screen width.
If only three items can fit on one line, then I'd like those items to fit evenly on the line, taking into account each individual items width.
All I can get at the moment is for the final div on a line to fill up the remaining space, which often means my items are all left aligned, e.g. I can get a layout like this:
AAAA -> BBBBB ->
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC -> DD -> EEE ->
FFFFF -> GGGG -> HHHHH
but I actually want it to look something like this:
AAAA -> BBBBB ->
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC -> DD -> EEE ->
FFFFF -> GGGG -> HHHHH
if you see what I mean.
Do I need to use tables for this rather than floating divs?
just a couple of other pointers. You should not have empty li tags, that is not semantically correct. Also in an ideal world you should not give id attributes layout names.
Personally I'd place the starting image on the ul and then place the closing image on the last li.
could probably do with seeing the surrounding markup to understand what elements you have in place. You could try having a surrounding div with margin: 0 auto;
You're probably going to need a surrounding div for each level.
Don't waste your time just go here:
http://www.cssmenubuilder.com/build-breadcrumb-menu
Thanks for the prompt responses. I'll try out what you are suggesting.
I'm currently trying to do this using a list, although I also got nowhere with divs.
I've tried pulling some HTML of my JSPs in order to try and demonstrate where I'm up to with this.
The spans have a class of "navigation" which basically draws a background image around the text to make it look like a button, as well as setting margins/paddings/etc. I've omitted the CSS which is directly related to the button drawing, since this is standard framework stuff in our system to draw a button. I have included the CSS which I'm using which is directly related to the workflow.
I'm trying to draw a starting image before the first button and then draw background images behind each button in order to draw a line between each button to represent the flow. I've then got an ending image at the end of the flow.
<html>
<body>
<STYLE>
#nav, #nav ul {
list-style: none;
margin: 0px;
width: 700px;
}
#nav li {
list-style: none;
float: left;
padding-left: 10px;
padding-right: 10px;
width: auto;
background-image: url(/lookandfeel/images/navMenuDiv.gif);
background-repeat: repeat-x;
}
li#ending {
background-image: url(/lookandfeel/images/navMenuRight.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
}
li#start {
background-image: url(/lookandfeel/images/navMenuLeft.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
}
.navigation a {
background-image: url(/pdr/images/navigation.gif);
}
</STYLE>
<ul id="nav" style="width: 100%;border: 1px solid">
<li id="start" />
<LI >
<SPAN class="navigation" >AAAAAAAAAA</SPAN>
</li>
<LI >
<SPAN class=navigation >BBBB</SPAN>
</li>
<LI >
<SPAN class=navigation>CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC</SPAN>
</li>
<LI>
<SPAN class=navigation>DDDDDDDDD</SPAN>
</li>
<LI>
<SPAN class=navigation>EEEEEEEE</SPAN>
</li>
<LI>
<SPAN class=navigation>FFFFFFFFFFFFFF</SPAN>
</li>
<li>
<SPAN class=navigation>GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG</SPAN
</LI>
<li id="ending" />
</ul>
</body>
</html>
Setting the li elements to display: inline, and giving the ul a text-align: justify property will get you part way there (in FFX3 and IE7 at least). However, it does raise some complications when applying the background images.
As much as I dislike to say things can't be done, I think I have to agree with #johnners on the surrounding element for each navigation level. Even if you were to use table layout CSS you would need some sort of surrounding element for each 'row' in order to get the spacing on the left and right correct.