Positioning of HTML elements with css - html

Question

HTML Code
<header>
<h1>Event Heading</h1>
<div class="meta">09 JUL 2014</div>
<div class="textblock">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Donec odio. Quisque volutpat mattis eros. Nullam malesuada erat ut turpis. Suspendisse urna nibh, viverra non, semper suscipit, posuere a, pede.</div>
</header>
Issue
I have this HTML structure which I can not edit/rearrange. I would like to position the h1, div.meta and div.textblock is as in the picture below.
I can't work it out with floats the way I want to because of the sequence of the HTML.
Illustration

Answer 1

This can be achieved with absolute positioning:
header {
position: relative;
min-height: 100px; }
div.meta {
position: absolute;
width: 100px; height:100px;
top:0; left:0;
border: 1px solid red; }
header h1 {
margin-left: 120px;
border-bottom: 2px solid red; }
header div.textblock { margin-left: 120px; }
See fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/utsKx/
You can change the div.meta widths and h1/textblock margin-left to percentages if you want a responsive layout.
EDIT
Added min-height to header to ensure div.meta never falls outside the parent header block. (Thanks for MarcAudet for pointing this out)

Answer 2

See this example:
Codepen Example
I think this is what you're looking for!

Answer 3

You can use this demo
Code Pen Demo
HTML
<header>
<div class="meta L">09 JUL 2014</div>
<h1 class="R">Event Heading</h1>
<div class="textblock R">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Donec odio. Quisque volutpat mattis eros. Nullam malesuada erat ut turpis. Suspendisse urna nibh, viverra non, semper suscipit, posuere a, pede.</div>
</header>
CSS
header
{
width:650px;
display:inline-block;
}
.meta
{
width:150px;
height:150px;
border:1px solid red;
margin:5px;
font-size:22px;
text-align:center;
}
h1,.textblock
{
width:400px;
text-align:left;
border:1px solid red;
}
h1
{
color:#B1003B;
margin-top:5px;
}
.textblock
{
margin-top:-22px;
}
.L
{
float:left;
}
.R
{
float:right;
}
.C1
{
color:#000000;
font-weight:bold;
font-size:36px;
}
.C2,.C3
{
color:#777777;
}
JQuery
var str = $(".meta").html();
s = str.split(' ');
$(".meta").html("<span class='C1'>"+s[0]+"</span></br><span class='C2'>"+s[1]+"</span></br><span class='C3'>"+s[2]+"</span>");