A lot of people's HTML markup looks like this:
<html>
<body>
<div id="wrapper">
<p>Stuff in here</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
And most of the time in examples here, or on the web, people suggest that you should apply width settings to the #wrapper, instead of the <body>.
Is there an underlying reason for that?
For example, in an article on techniques for gracefully degrading media queries, and to give you some context on Technique 1: Do Nothing:
The elephant in the room is Internet Explorer for the desktop.
With a mobile-first solution, large screens will display the content
in one column, resulting in a painful reading experience for the user,
way past the established maximum for comfort: 50 to 75 characters.
It might be worth setting a max-width property in your main container and then upping that max-width in a media query.
And their CSS:
#wrapper {
_width: 460px; /* Take that, IE6! */
max-width: 460px;
}
#media only screen and (width) {
#wrapper {
max-width: 1200px;
}
}
Here's how it'd come together for IE (media query is commented out).
Would there be any difference whereby instead of applying that to #wrapper, we would apply it to <body> — with the standard website in mind?
Any potential bugs? I tried it here, and it seems to be OK. Just what if the layout gets more advanced...
Well, you want to use as few elements as possible I guess. However there are many instances where #page-wrapper and body are not interchangeable. In many situations you need to use the body as the background color instead of the html tag. In these cases (weighted footers for example) you need the body to stretch out the html and you need a wrapper to contain the content, maybe center the content, and force the body to stretch out and contain it.
So - I guess I would say, that most people use a wrapper because they saw it in their first class or online tutorial. I think that for the most part, it is a habit for many. I would leave the body as is and margin the wrapper to 0 auto and use a max width like you have. It's just EI 8 and before - can I use media queries ? - maybe you should detect EI 8 and make a unique style sheet. I find that after defining everything for mobil, my media queries are only a few lines of iteration after that -
Related
I simply want to reduce desktop view width slightly but can't get it to work with media query. My latest attempt is
#media (min-width: 992px) and (max-width: 1199.98px) {
html, body {
max-width: 80%;
}
}
but it has no affect. I don't think I want to mess with container b/c that would leave out the navbar. Using my own stylesheet (added below bootstrap cdn stuff) rather than using the media queries directly in template.html but I don't know if that makes any difference. Am I trying to do this the right way or am I completely missing something?
You don't want go banging around on high-level elements when using a layout library. This limits what you and others can do in the page later (say you want a full-width banner somewhere). You also probably don't want to casually override all instances of a Bootstrap class.
In this case, look at adding a custom class to the .container or .container-fluid element, limiting its width:
.container.narrow {
max-width: 80%;
}
Use that for any containers where you want a narrower width, and use containers without that class for wider content.
<div class="container narrow"> ... </div>
Whether you apply this in a media query is probably immaterial.
I was strugglng to find the answer to my screen not working correctly for the mobile and below answer from you worked like a charm. Thanks so much for your answer. I removed the meta-name line and it worked like a charm.
Mohan
#Beanic
I presume that you have added the viewport tag for that() –
Jan 22, 2020 at 12:50
I would like to use media queries to resize elements based on the size of a div element they are in. I cannot use the screen size as the div is just used like a widget within the webpage, and its size can vary.
Yes, CSS Container Queries are what you're looking for. The CSS Containment Module is the specification that details this feature.
You can read more about the decade of work, including proposals, proofs-of-concept, discussions and other contributions by the broader web developer community here! For more details on how such a feature might work and be used, check out Miriam Suzanne's extensive explainer.
Currently only Chromium 105+ supports Container queries out of the box, though Safari 16 will include support as well. Hopefully it won't be much longer before we see a robust cross-browser implementation of such a system. It's been a grueling wait, but I'm glad that it's no longer something we simply have to accept as an insurmountable limitation of CSS due to cyclic dependencies or infinite loops or what have you (these are still a potential issue in some aspects of the proposed design, but I have faith that the CSSWG will find a way).
Media queries aren't designed to work based on elements in a page. They are designed to work based on devices or media types (hence why they are called media queries). width, height, and other dimension-based media features all refer to the dimensions of either the viewport or the device's screen in screen-based media. They cannot be used to refer to a certain element on a page.
If you need to apply styles depending on the size of a certain div element on your page, you'll have to use JavaScript to observe changes in the size of that div element instead of media queries.
Alternatively, with more modern layout techniques introduced since the original publication of this answer such as flexbox and standards such as custom properties, you may not need media or element queries after all. Djave provides an example.
I've just created a javascript shim to achieve this goal. Take a look if you want, it's a proof-of-concept, but take care: it's a early version and still needs some work.
https://github.com/marcj/css-element-queries
From a layout perspective, it is possible using modern techniques.
Its made up (I believe) by Heydon Pickering. He details the process here: http://www.heydonworks.com/article/the-flexbox-holy-albatross
Chris Coyier picks it up and works through a demo of it here: https://css-tricks.com/putting-the-flexbox-albatross-to-real-use/
To restate the issue, below we see 3 of the same component, each made up of three orange divs labelled a, b and c.
The second two's blocks display vertically, because they are limited on horizontal room, while the top components 3 blocks are laid out horizontally.
It uses the flex-basis CSS property and CSS Variables to create this effect.
.panel{
display: flex;
flex-wrap: wrap;
border: 1px solid #f00;
$breakpoint: 600px;
--multiplier: calc( #{$breakpoint} - 100%);
.element{
min-width: 33%;
max-width: 100%;
flex-grow: 1;
flex-basis: calc( var(--multiplier) * 999 );
}
}
Demo
Heydon's article is 1000 words explaining it in detail, and I'd highly recommend reading it.
Update 2021/22
As mentioned in other answers, container queries are coming. There is a full spec for it, and its usage is detailed on MDN:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_Container_Queries
and there is a polyfill to get browsers that don't yet support it up to speed:
https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/container-query-polyfill
There is a nice little overview video of it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCNMyYr7F6w
This has now shipped to Chrome (05 September 2022)
https://caniuse.com/css-container-queries
A Media Query inside of an iframe can function as an element query. I've successfully implement this. The idea came from a recent post about Responsive Ads by Zurb. No Javascript!
This is currently not possible with CSS alone as #BoltClock wrote in the accepted answer, but you can work around that by using JavaScript.
I created a container query (aka element query) polyfill to solve this kind of issue. It works a bit different than other scripts, so you don’t have to edit the HTML code of your elements. All you have to do is include the script and use it in your CSS like so:
.element:container(width > 99px) {
/* If its container is at least 100px wide */
}
https://github.com/ausi/cq-prolyfill
I ran into the same problem a couple of years ago and funded the development of a plugin to help me in my work. I've released the plugin as open-source so others can benefit from it as well, and you can grab it on Github: https://github.com/eqcss/eqcss
There are a few ways we could apply different responsive styles based on what we can know about an element on the page. Here are a few element queries that the EQCSS plugin will let you write in CSS:
#element 'div' and (condition) {
$this {
/* Do something to the 'div' that meets the condition */
}
.other {
/* Also apply this CSS to .other when 'div' meets this condition */
}
}
So what conditions are supported for responsive styles with EQCSS?
Weight Queries
min-width in px
min-width in %
max-width in px
max-width in %
Height Queries
min-height in px
min-height in %
max-height in px
max-height in %
Count Queries
min-characters
max-characters
min-lines
max-lines
min-children
max-children
Special Selectors
Inside EQCSS element queries you can also use three special selectors that allow you to more specifically apply your styles:
$this (the element(s) matching the query)
$parent (the parent element(s) of the element(s) matching the query)
$root (the root element of the document, <html>)
Element queries allow you to compose your layout out of individually responsive design modules, each with a bit of 'self-awareness' of how they are being displayed on the page.
With EQCSS you can design one widget to look good from 150px wide all the way up to 1000px wide, then you can confidently drop that widget into any sidebar in any page using any template (on any site) and
The question is very vague. As BoltClock says, media queries only know the dimensions of the device. However, you can use media queries in combination with descender selectors to perform adjustments.
.wide_container { width: 50em }
.narrow_container { width: 20em }
.my_element { border: 1px solid }
#media (max-width: 30em) {
.wide_container .my_element {
color: blue;
}
.narrow_container .my_element {
color: red;
}
}
#media (max-width: 50em) {
.wide_container .my_element {
color: orange;
}
.narrow_container .my_element {
color: green;
}
}
The only other solution requires JS.
The only way I can think that you can accomplish what you want purely with css, is to use a fluid container for your widget. If your container's width is a percentage of the screen then you can use media queries to style depending on your container's width, as you will now know for each screen's dimensions what is your container's dimensions. For example, let's say you decide to make your container's 50% of the screen width. Then for a screen width of 1200px you know that your container is 600px
.myContainer {
width: 50%;
}
/* you know know that your container is 600px
* so you style accordingly
*/
#media (max-width: 1200px) {
/* your css for 600px container */
}
You can use the ResizeObserver API. It's still in it's early days so it's not supported by all browsers yet (but there's several polyfills that can help you with that).
This API allows you to attach an event listener when resizing a DOM element.
Demo 1 - Demo 2
I was also thinking of media queries, but then I found this:
http://www.mademyday.de/css-height-equals-width-with-pure-css.html
Maintain the aspect ratio of a div with CSS
Just create a wrapper <div> with a percentage value for padding-bottom, like this:
div {
width: 100%;
padding-bottom: 75%;
background:gold; /** <-- For the demo **/
}
<div></div>
It will result in a <div> with height equal to 75% of the width of its container (a 4:3 aspect ratio).
This technique can also be coupled with media queries and a bit of ad hoc knowledge about page layout for even more finer-grained control.
It's enough for my needs. Which might be enough for your needs too.
For mine I did it by setting the div's max width, hence for small widget won't get affected and the large widget is resized due to the max-width style.
// assuming your widget class is "widget"
.widget {
max-width: 100%;
height: auto;
}
For example, I'm making a website with width of 960px. How should I use the container of this width? Are there any rules about it?
.container {
width: 960px;
margin: 0 auto;
}
What is more correct?
1) <div class='container'>[whole website]</div>
2) <div id='menu/header/etc'><div class='container'>[content for this block]</div></div>
3) <div id='menu/header/etc' class='container'>[content for this block]</div>
There are two ways to do that:
<div id="container">whole website</div>
<header><div class="container"></div></header>
The advantage of the second method is you can set background: red for the header and center its content within the container
I agree with #magreenberg, and I'd also say look around at boilerplates like Foundation, Bootstrap, or Skeleton Framework and look at their code to see how they format their pages.
Normally you get a Container (full width), Wrapper (content width like 960px), and rows, and within those rows you get various numbers of columns from 1-12.
Make sure to validate your HTML as you go to make sure what you write is semantically correct, and also check your pages in different browsers to check your CSS.
Having seen advice seemingly change over the years regarding use of empty DIVs (ie. <DIV CLASS="somediv"></DIV>) I'm confused as to the current thinking over whether or not to use when a DIV will have no inner HTML.
I can find no definitive confirmation over whether we can rely on all modern browsers to display background color and image correctly at the specified width & height when there is no inner HTML, so I'm thinking maybe we can't rely on it - yet it's such a seemingly basic area.
I have even seen suggestions that empty DIVs should never be used - but do specs really state it is 'wrong' to have empty DIVs, or is it just unreliable? (I've tried finding reference to them, but maybe I'm using the wrong terms).
To illustrate, here are 5 areas where I would normally use an empty DIV, in the absence of any recommended alternative:
as a placeholder for content which will subsequently be fetched by XHR calls
as a way to manually create space in a layout
where an image is defined in CSS (as a background image, but will effectively be foreground)
where the text will come from the CSS using .somediv:after{content:SOMETEXT}
where CSS is used to display graph bars etc using solid background color
Maybe there are different answers for each of these, which might explain the complexity over this issue.
I have, of course, tried discovering already, but for example the SO question Is necessary to show an empty <div>? suggests to me there is a huge amount of "IMHO", "probably", "seems to work" in this area. I would expect that by now that some official consensus has been reached on best practice.
So.. should I use and if so should I set font-size to the same as the smaller of DIV width/height to ensure that space is filled in all browsers? Are there any other CSS tricks to ensure this will work in all browsers?
The browser is not going to discard or forget your container just because it does not have any contents (yet).
If you want the container to have a specific placeholder shape, then you might give it min-height, min-width, height and width and make sure it's display: block;.
If you are still unsure, you can fill it with a spacer.gif/png without padding and margin.
http://jsfiddle.net/APxNF/1/
Short answer. Yes, browsers will render the div even if there is no content.
Long answer, That might now always be the case. I have worked in the web for 8 years now and never had to use these, but here they are anyway.
jsFiddle demo
HTML
<div class="empty1"></div>
<div class="empty2"></div>
<div class="empty3"></div>
CSS
.empty1 {
background: #FBB829;
height: 100px;
width: 100px;
}
.empty2:before {
content: "\00a0";
}
.empty2 {
background: #FF0066;
height: 100px;
width: 100px;
}
.empty3 {
background: #F02311;
min-height: 1px;
height: 100px;
width: 100px;
}
Sources:
Experience
Empty div with 2px width and background color doesnt show with height as 100%
http://csscreator.com/node/36023
I have a two column layout, with a gray sidebar on the right. I need the sidebar's height to expand when the height of the left column is increased (due to content being dynamically expanded). I can make the sidebar fit a static page, but I cannot get it to increase in size with the rest of the page. Did some Googling, but couldn't find a work-around that worked for me.
Does anyone know how to do this?
This is a common problem when using DIVS for this type of layout.
If you google 'Faux column' you should get some answers.
eg. http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fauxcolumns/
This may be slightly off but if you use jQuery on your site you can perform a quick calculation and resize all DIVs sharing a similar class to the maximum height:
$('.elements').height(Math.max($('#div1').height(), $('#div2').height()));
I have been haunted by this problem for a while and I wrote an article about this issue: Done with faux columns. Here is what I argued:
JavaScript based solution for this
problem is not worse than any other
solution. In fact if you are using
JavaScript, you may save a few hours
of frustration of trying to get things
working. People will warn you against
this by saying “What will happen if
the user turned off JavaScript?“.
Believe me, if the user has turned off
JavaScript, most of the web is broken
for him anyway. Your sidebar does not
matter to him.
As cballou mentioned, the simplest way to do this thing is to use JQuery code:
$(".sidebar").height(Math.max($(".content").height(),$(".sidebar").height()));
I changed the background-color to the same color as my sidebar, on that specific page, although I do have backgrounds for all my sections rather than one overall background. But that might not work for everyone.
In my stylesheet,
.sidec
{
background-color:#123456;
}
In my HTML page,
<body class="sidec">
content....
</body>
I recently saw a quite creative solution to this problem using the CSS properties position:absolute and border.
Definitely worth checking out to see if it works for you.
Link: http://woorkup.com/2009/10/11/really-simple-css-trick-for-equal-height-columns/
I'm not sure if this will help, as I'm a newbie. However, when struggling with getting my sidebar to show the whole content when I doubled it's size I did the following. I was changing my height and width with no response until I changed the class. My class was listed SB frame SB width. So when I changed my class to read SB height SB width it fit to my content instead of the original frame size. I also tried SB max sb width with worked too, but it took out my footer menu bar (meaning it wouldn't show it anymore). I went back to SB height SB width, and all is well. That's super duper elementary for all of you I'm sure, but just in case there is another newbie reading this that doesn't understand much about html code like myself... I hope this helps =)
Happy Holidays Everyone!
hugs, tara
I'm guessing you want to apply certain effect to your layout such that it will require both columns to resize together. If you want to dynamically change the values of the height of the columns, I doubt it will work simply with css unless you implement some javascript to control the style.
As Dal suggested, do look at the link on faux columns. As the name suggests, the solution isn't much about modifying the columns height. Instead, it gives the "illusion" that both columns appear to be of the same height when in reality they are not -- and is with the use of tiles of background image.
The idea is there isn't a need to complicate the mark-up. Simple structure with a touch of "illusion" with images is a common practice in web design.
Regards,
Jonah
With the poor attitude towards new members on here I expect to be barracked for this answer, here goes.
I got around this problem by creating a background image 960px wide 1px high with the two colors I needed for the columns in their respective widths (780px and 180px). I then used this as the background image for my container repeated on the y axis and made the content and the right sidebar background-color: transparent.
.container {
width: 960px;
background-color: #FFFFFF;
margin: 0 auto;
background-image: url(../images/bgs/conbg.jpg);
background-repeat: repeat-y;
}
.sidebar1 {
float: right;
width: 180px;
height:auto;
background-color:transparent;
padding-bottom: 10px;
}
.content {
padding: 10px 0;
width: 780px;
background-color:transparent;
float: right;
}
I am sure that this method has its limitations but it works perfectly on all my pages.
It is possible that I have not explained this very well, if so, be nice about it will you please. I will endevour to expand on my method(which is probably already common knowledge).