FYI: This is a follow up to another question: Position element absolutely, but to the right of another element
I have a list of form elements and I'm trying to add callouts for each one. Each form entry has this general form:
<li>
<input ...>
<div class='callout'>Helpful description about form item.</div>
</li>
The .callout has position:absolute and the LI's have position:relative so that the callout can be positioned "absolutely", relative to the LI.
That all works fine, but the problem is that one of the ancestors of the also contains some floats so I used the overflow:hidden trick on that to make sure it contains them. Unfortunately, that also means it's cutting off my callouts because they extend outside of it.
I guess a fallback is to drop an empty div at the end of that ancestor and just do clear:both on that, but is there a nicer CSS solution that will force the ancestor to contain the floats, but still allow absolutely positioned callouts to be visible outside the box?
Instead of overflow:hidden you can use clearfix method. Write like this:
li:after{
content:'';
display:block;
clear:both;
}
Related
CSS is still fairly new to me. I have a div element and want to define a button element that would be placed right of the div element. However, I want to do this without modifying any of the styling of the div element. Is this possible? Edit: If yes, please show me an example :)
You can use position:absolute for that element and align it using right/left and top/bottom css rules, this will align the element relative to the entire webpage (or nearest position:relative parent), but what you're looking for is usually done by making both elements float:right/left or display:inline-block. Note that the '/' in my answer indicate your choices, not actual css directives.
Simple add the
float:left
or
float:right
to style it will work fine and display after one and other.
Is there CSS which can allow an element to follow flow (similar to position:inline), while a child to the element has position:absolute?
EDIT: the answer is yes, just use inline and position absolute. I had a different issue than the one I posted. My apologies. My issue was that using margin:auto made the item centred, but gave all margins 0 rather than the maximum amount (ie. the container would spread as far as it could and the border would generally touch the border of the parent element). To solve the issue I'll be using an additional container and text-align.
Thanks to the people who helped and read this question.
Ignore the following historic portion of the post.
Obviously I want the position absolute to be positioned relative to
the bounds of it's parents (so the parent would not have
position:static).
Still I am unsure how to do this. Does CSS even have the expressive
power to do this?
Think of having a picture in the middle of a paragraph, but instead of
an image, it's a container with more elements inside.
Basically what you are looking for is position:relative;
Position relative retains the normal flow position but allows coordinate modifications. Using the css values top and left, for example will move the object relative to where it should normally be placed. If you nest the object inside a div, it will use the div's top left corner as the 0,0 coordinate origin.
Keep in mind that the position:relative property is applied to the elements inside your parent container and not the parent itself. You can use static or whatever you'd like for the parent. However, the parent won't necessarily resize to encapsulate its relatively positioned children visually, so you will have to set height and width values yourself.
<style type="text/css">
#my_button {
position:relative;
top:10px;
left:10px
}
#my_div {
height:25px;
background-color:yellow
}
</style>
<div id="my_div">
<input type="button" value="OK" id="my_button"></input>
</div>
Use position:relative; That way the parent stays in the same location but child elements with position: absolute are positioned relative to the parent not the body.
Basically, I have a form, outside of that form in this random space on my page I want to position a div (containing two buttons). I've looked at using absolute positioning. However, it is positioning it outside of the page wrapper.
How can I get the positioning to be specified from the corner point of the actual page and not the window?
How can I get the positioning to be
specified from the corner point of the
actual page and not the window?
You need to add position: relative to the element you would like the top and left values to be offset from.
That might be your form, or it might be your #container/#wrapper element.
See here for details and a visual: http://css-tricks.com/absolute-positioning-inside-relative-positioning/
Looks like you have your answer by now. But ill post this anyways.
A simple and short example which shows how relative positioning to parent is done.
http://jsfiddle.net/EadXw/
If you want it positioned top:0;left:0 on the page, place it immediately after the <body> tag.
If it is wrapped in anything the containers may change it's position. Make sure it is independant and not influenced by any containers.
Sounds like you should read up a bit on the flow of the DOM.
Positioning with CSS and HTML
Make sure your <form> element wraps your whole "page" and that the <div> with the buttons is the first child of <form>.
When you do this you can add the rule position:relative to the form and position:absolute to the <div> and move it around with top and left.
Another option is to have no position rule on the form and have position:relative on the <div>. This is more compatible with iPad and iPhone devices, which don't like absolute positioning. When you go for this approach be sure to have a fixed height for the <div> and a negative margin-bottom of the same size.
I am using firebug to debug, one useful feature of firebug is when I click the element in HTML, firebug will show highlight on the actual browser window so that I know which part is currently selected.
But I noticed, with some css, below code is interesting:
<div>
<div>
</div>
</div>
The parent divs highlight area didn't cover the child div's highlight area. In my opinion, the child divs area should be a subset of parent's, is it right? In which cases that that is not true?
There are some cases:
If the child uses position: relative; top: 200px and move away from the parent.
If the child does something similar using a negative margin. (similar to 1)
If the child is a float, and there is no clearing or some kind of clearfix, such as the newest method of making the parent overflow: auto, then the parent will not enclose the floated child.
It is mostly likely because the child divs are floated. In this case you need to use a clearfix hack, or add an additional div into the container like so:
<div style="clear: both"></div>
It depends upon the style being applied. Generally what you are saying holds good. But positioning of a child element can be made independent of the parent.
You may please show the css to get clear idea.
If the inner element is floating or positioned absolutely, it won't affect the size of the parent.
If the inner element is floating you can change the overflow setting of the outer element to make it contain the child. You can specify overflow:hidden; for the parent element, but no size, which has the side effect that it will be sized to contain it's children.
I'm trying to get my wrapper to hold my content but it won't. I've taken out the floats and added "overflow: visible" no no avail. I'm thinking it's because of my z-indexing and negative margins, but have tried taking these out and still no change. Any ideas?
http://www.jenniferhope.com/bio
(the float is still in this example.)
Thanks for any help you can offer!
Try this:
#wrapper {
overflow:auto;
}
I took a look at the code on your site. There are a number of things you will probably want to address. It will be difficult to say exactly what you need to do, since I don't know exactly how you want the site to look. But, in general, here are some pointers:
To contain floated elements, apply overflow:auto; to the parent element, or place something to clear the floats at the bottom of the container, such as: <div style="clear:both;"></div>
Try to avoid using negative margins for positioning. This is OK in a pinch, but usually there is a better way.
If you need to have one element layered over another, you will need to position the element using position:absolute; and a z-index. When using position:absolute; the element will be positioned relative to the nearest ancestor that has position:relative; applied. If no element has this applied, it will be positioned relative to the body element.