Does absolutely positioned elements not obey an overall div CSS command? - html

For instance, the example below.
Html Code:
<body>
<div id="container">
<figure id="abtex">
<img src="images/abtex125.png" />
</figure>
</div>
</body>
CSS code :
#container{
max-width:1050px;
margin: 0 auto;
max-height: 1000px;
}
#abtex {
position: absolute;
top:-100px;
left:400px;
}
#abtex would not follow the #container CSS commands such as the max-width etc right ?

It's about CSS inheritance. Some CSS-properties do get inherited – most don't.
In those cases you'll need to check the specification or some CSS manual.
See: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS/max-width for your specific case. It's noted in the MDN entry, that the max-width property won't get inherited ("Inherited: no").
On the other hand, it's not even necessary to specify a max-width for the child div#abtex, as its maximum width will be the one f the parent element (which again can be manipulated by overflow).

You would need to set a position on the #container element for the child's absolute position to be relative to it.
From the MDN:
absolute: Do not leave space for the element. Instead, position it at a specified position relative to its closest positioned ancestor or to the containing block. Absolutely positioned boxes can have margins, they do not collapse with any other margins.
In other words, since #container doesn't have a position set, the closest positioned ancestor = the body. Setting position:relative on #container is the typical solution for this.

Related

DIV changed its behaviour when "position:absolute" was added to it. Why?

I'm new to CSS and I have a question.
First, my HTML and CSS code:
<!-- HTML CODE -->
<body>
<div id="container">Container
</div>
<div id="inner">Inner</div>
</body>
<!-- CSS CODE -->
#container {
background-color:#b6ff00;
width:500px;
height:500px;
position:relative;
}
#inner {
background-color:#ffd800;
}
With current code, the browser shows the following page:
This is expected.
But if I add this css property to #inner element position:absolute; there will be a following output:
As you can see, the #inner div, takes only that much space it needs. Why this changed with only position:absolute; property added to #inner div?
That's because when you use position: absolute; the element will take up width upto the elements defined/content it contains., cuz it just gets out of the document flow so it is block level in nature but won't take up entire horizontal space on the document, as it's just out of the flow of the document..
If you want it to be full width you need to define width: 100%; explicitly so that it will take 100% of the relative parent's width as well as the height if you declare height: 100%;
Also, make sure you always use position: absolute; with a wrapper element set to position: relative; or your element will fly out in the wild which will eventually end up taking the viewport as the last relative wrapper if you set the position of the element using top, right, bottom or left.
I've explained here in detail, that how CSS Positioning Works
Worth to note that, you make any element a position: absolute; element, it will behave as a block level element, but you need to define height and width so for example, if you turn an inline span element a position: absolute; you can define height and width without making it display: block; (Unless and until you are using display: none; initially)
position: absolute; does not behave the same as block elements.
You will need to set a width and a height for a div that is absolutely positioned.
This is fundamentally how position absolute works. Once taken out of the flow of the document it becomes an inline-block element that is absolutely positioned within the nearest element that is positioned relatively (or the top most element)
If you need it to then be a certain dimensions you can try to set widths and heights, or you can do things like
#inner {
position: absolute;
left: 0;
right: 0;
}
...which would ensure it always stuck to the left and right sides of the screen.
It's generally good practice to put things that are positioned absolutely inside of an element with "position:relative" on it, as your code stands it suggests you want your #inner element to be placed anywhere on the page, whereas if you wanted it to be of a size and position relative to #container your code should look like this:
<body>
<div id="container">
Container
<div id="inner">Inner</div>
</div>
</body>
with CSS such as:
#container {
position: relative;
}
#inner {
background-color:#ffd800; width:500px;
height:500px;
position:relative;
}
You can see your output here:-
http://jsfiddle.net/KggJd/
Let me explain a little:
Postition: relative
This will align itself in accordance with the elements found before (i.e) Prior Siblings.
You can change the position by using margin-top, margin-left, ....
Position: absolute
This will always consider from the browser's start point and won't be in accordance with anything.
Drawbacks:
You cannot consider this as the parent or anything when absolutely positioned.
You can change its position by using top, bottom, right, left.

Why do absolute elements stack up on each other instead of stacking one after the other?

How can get both #row1 and #row2 in the following code to be visible, one after the other vertically, as if there wasn't any absolute/relative positioning involved (though without removing the positioning properties)? I.e. having the two .row <div> to appear as "normal" block elements.
body { position:relative; min-height: 2em; width: 100%; }
.container {position:absolute;}
.row {position:relative;}
.col1, .col2 {position: absolute;}
<body>
<div class="container">
<div id="row1" class="row">
<div class="col1">Hello</div>
<div class="col2">World</div>
</div>
<div id="row2" class="row">
<div class="col1">Salut</div>
<div class="col2">le monde</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
(Sample also available as a fiddle.)
I need the elements to have the positioning provided in the CSS rules, for reasons excluded here.
The content is programmatically dynamic; I don't know the elements' heights beforehand, so a solution can't be based on specifying an absolute length (e.g. 'px') anywhere.
Well you have some weird wishes here so let me explain you what those positions really mean in CSS and how they work, using position: relative; is just like using static position, the difference is making an element position: relative;, you will be able to use top, right, bottom and left properties, though the element will move, but physically it will be in the document flow..
Coming to position: absolute;, when you make any element position: absolute;, it gets out of the document flow, hence, it has nothing to do with any other element, so in your example
you have .col1, .col2 {position: absolute;} which are positioned absolute and since both are out of the document flow, they will overlap... Because they are already nested under position: absolute; parent i.e .container and since no width is assigned, it will take the minimal width and hence, your elements overlap, if you cannot change your CSS(which according to me doesn't make any sense why you can't change) still if you want, than you can do is this..
Demo (Without removing any of your position property) And this is really dirty
For the s characters, it will be at the top as your container element is out of the flow, and hence, no height will be considered in the document flow, unless and until you wrap that s in some element, and bring it down with, margin padding or CSS Positioning.
CSS Positions Explained
As I commented, here are few examples of how CSS Positioning actually works, to start with, there are 4 values for position property i.e static which is the default one, relative, absolute and fixed, so starting with static, nothing to learn much here, elements just stackup one below the other unless they are floated or made display: inline-block. With static positioning, top, right, bottom and left won't work.
Demo
Coming to position: relative; I've already explained you in general, it's nothing but same as static, it stacks up on other element, it is in the document flow, but you can tweak the elements position using top, right, bottom and left, physically, the element stays in the flow, only position of the element is changed.
Demo 2
Now comes absolute which generally many fails to understand, when making an element absolute it gets out of the document flow, and hence it stays independent, it has nothing to do with other elements positioning unless it's overlapped by other position: absolute element which can be fixed using z-index to change the stack level. The main thing to remember here is to have a position: relative; container so that your absolute positioned element is relative to that relative positioned element, else your element will fly out in the wild.
It's worth noting that position: absolute; element when positioned absolute; inside an absolute positioned parent element, than it is relative to that element and not relative to the grand parent element which may be positioned relative
Demo 3 (Without position: relative; container)
Demo 4 (With position: relative; container)
Last is position fixed, this is same as absolute but it flows along when you scroll, it's out of the document flow, but it scrolls, also, position: fixed; element cannot be relative to any container element having any type of position, not even relative, position fixed element is always relative to the viewport, so designers use position: absolute; when they want to have a fixed position behavior but relative to parent and tweak the top property onScroll.
Demo 5
What you want, is not possible without modifying the CSS position property. However, what you can do without touching the existing CSS, is overriding it with a more specific selector
.row .col1, .row .col2 {
position: relative;
}
See JSFiddle
when position:relative is used, the page layout will occur normally before being offset by top, left values, however position:absolute will ignore the document flow. The relative ones will work with no changes but absolute must be changed
.col1, .col2 {display:inline-block;}
http://jsfiddle.net/C4bQN/
EDIT: Depending on your circumstances, maybe you can wrap your table in an absolute positioned div then use normal document flow within the table?
<div class="absolute-wrap">
<div class="row">
<div class="col"> </div>
</div>
</div>

How to have a div be positioned relative to its parent, but float above it's siblings?

I have one div - the #container - that stretches across the window, filled with a graphic. I need a bar to float over the container div on the right side. If I use position:absolute and right:0, the div is positioned according to the window, not the #container div.
If I use position:relative, then the div is positioned according to the #container div but still takes up space and won't be hovering over the #container content.
Here is a JSFiddle that I made with my attempt.
http://jsfiddle.net/y8LCu/
NOTE that I do not want to use float:right, because that would keep the side div in the flow of the content, which I do not want.
I think I got it the way you wanted it?
http://jsfiddle.net/y8LCu/9/
You needed to make the parent position: relative and if you don't want the overflow you need overflow: hidden.
position:absolute; allows you to position an element compared to any positioned ancestor.
<div class="parent">
<div class="child">
</div>
</div>
.parent { position : relative; }
.child { position : absolute; }
Now, child will position itself based on the parent.
If the parent doesn't have a position set, then it will look at the position of the grandparent...
...and on and on, and if none of them have a position set, then it will look at the position of the actual web-page.
Also, if you have multiple positioned elements (whether relative/absolute/fixed) near the same place, and you want them to overlap in an order you set in CSS, and not in the order of which is set on the page last...
...then you also need to start using z-index (which only works on positioned elements).
The higher it is, the more stuff it stacks on top of.
Set the parent's position to relative
#container
{
position:relative;
}

Avoiding parent div properties in child div

I am using the following code to center align my webpage,
#parent{
margin:0 auto;
width: 960px;
}
<div id="parent">
<!--more code goes here-->
</div>
The properties have moved to all of the child div's causing them to be center aligned. I am not a CSS coder but I rememeber there is a trick to make the parent div elements to stick to the parent div only. Please help. Thanks
#parent{
margin: 0 auto;
width: 960px;
}
#parent * {
margin: 0;
width: auto;
}
#parent{
margin:0 auto;
width: 960px;
}
#child{
margin:0;
width: 960px;
}
<div id="parent">
<div id="child">
<!--more code goes here-->
</div>
</div>
would work, right?
What I usually do to avoid having children inherit properties is have one parent with two children. I make identical divs for each of the children. Then, I give one of those divs the properties you DO NOT want the other children to have, like opacity or others. After that, I put the regular children layout divs and content into child number 2. That way, the undesirable properties become sibling properties, and not inherited.
The margin and width properties are not inherited (except via the use of the inherit value). However, an inner element appears by default within the outer element visually, so it may look like it inherited those properties. In reality, e.g. margin-left is 0 (by default), but this means that the element starts at the same horizontal position as its parent. Similarly, width is auto for block elements that have no width set on them, and this means the available horizontal space.
The fix to your problem depends on what the problem is. There is no inheritance problem for these properties. But if you wish to make e.g. a child of a centered element start at the very left of the browser window, you need to e.g. set negative margin on it or to use absolute positioning.
For many other properties, such as color, an element inherits the property from its parent if the property is not set on the element itself. If inheritance is not desirable, set the property on the inner element. There is no trick; this is how CSS works.

How to put a static div on top of an absolute position div?

I am building a small web application.
I have two divs. One is absolute and the other is static.
I am trying to position my static div on top of my absolute one, so that it remains the top most item.
Very simple Code Sample:
http://jsbin.com/efuxe3/edit
How can this be done?
Edit:
I have been using z-index. It seems to have no effect.
z-index doesn't apply to static elements.
According to this page:
This property specifies the stack
level of a box whose position value is
one of absolute, fixed, or relative.
If you make your div relative instead, you can use z-index to determine the order.
position: relative positions the element relative to its default (static) position, so if you don't specify a top, bottom, left or right then there'll be no difference between static and relative other than that relative allows you to use z-index to move your element up the stack.
Edit: based on your code sample, here's a working demo.
Edit 2: based on Nathan D. Ryan's suggestion in the comments below, you could also apply a negative z-index to your absolutely-positioned div. This would move it behind everything else on the page that didn't have a lower z-index defined.
Rather than placing the statically positioned element over the absolutely positioned element, you can place the absolutely positioned element behind the statically positioned element. You can do this by setting the z-index of the absolutely positioned element to a negative value. However, as #Town mentioned, this will also place the absolutely positioned element behind everything else in the normal flow.
You can apply a negative z-index to the other elements placing them behind the static div. This can be applied directly to the other elements or you can use
*:not(connectedObjects){
z-index:-1000000000000000000000000000;
}
But this does not work in internet explorer
You could have a second absolutely positioned div to contain your statically positioned elements:
<div id="container">
<div class="underlay">
I want this to appear under my static items.
</div>
<div class="item_container">
<div class="item">blah</div>
<div class="item">yada</div>
<div class="item">foo</div>
<div class="item">bar</div>
</div>
</div>
And your css is
.underlay {
position: absolute;
z-index: 0;
}
.item_container {
position:absolute;
z-index:10;
top: 0;
left: 0;
height: 100%;
width: 100%;
}
.item {
position: static;
}
if by top you mean z-Index, you can set the style of that div with a higher z-index
div.divClassName {
z-Index:100;
}
edit:
you can change the z-index of your div, with absolute positioning to a negative, but then you will have to do so for every other element.
Unless you really have a really good reason to using positioning to static you can change it
to relative, and the z-index will have an effect.io have tried it in your code sample and it works fine;
Work with z-index attribute. The z-index of the object which should be at front must be higher than the other ones.