I need to position each element of my HTML independently to each other i.e. each element should be able to have each own top and left margin. Setting the margin for an element should not impact or change the margin/positioning of any other element. The html is pasted in an email as a signature, so if a user inserts a line above the elements, they should however move down in unison. I have tried divs with positions and margins to no avail - it seems the first element always impacts the position of the second element. Please help!
Since it is e-mail, I would try using tables. I know tables are frowned upon for layout, but there are so many e-mail clients out there you really want to use the simplest markup possible so it just works and forget about semantics.
You might also want to look at example templates used by e-mail services like MailChimp, and see how they do it. Chances are those are tried and tested solutions that work.
This can be achieved by making an image the first element in the html. Further elements like can then be positioned by using the position:relative and margin properties. Simply subtract the image height from the top margin of the first text element. Using this technique, text can even be positioned above an image.
Related
See My Fiddle:
http://jsfiddle.net/5BEsZ/
I've discovered something very strange that I haven't seen documented anywhere else... Was wondering if you all had a solution.
You'll notice the negative margin hits a limit at around -212% for image elements. Is there a reason for this? Can you think of a work around?
Why I Need This (what I've tried):
I'm making a fluid layout and I want to display a rating system. I have a sprite sheet of stars (similar to the one in the fiddle) that I want to reuse at various sizes.
Because the size changes I can't use a background image. So I decided to use an image inside a container with a variable width and overflow:hidden. The sprite sheet adjusts to the width of the container and the container's viewable content is determined by a padding-top:20%. This is so it can be fluid with its width (since every star is a box, the total height is 20% the width).
Then I try and position the star image inside the container with margin-top. I tried using position:relative and a top:-X%, but because the container technically has no height this was causing issue on mobile phones (-100% of 0 is 0, etc).
So I assumed negative margin would work, but then discovered this strange issue!
NOTE: Because it affects only the last row I can make it work in my situation by using a padding-bottom instead of top (thereby bumping every star row up 1), but this isn't an adequate solution for me because it just ignores the problem. What if I wanted quarter stars?
I've updated your fiddle. img tags are "inline" elements by default, which impacts the way margin is calculated relative to the containing element. By forcing the image element to be rendered like a block (display: block), you're able to achieve the results you were expecting. A div element is a block by default.
As a side note, you'll want to avoid using inline styles (a different sort of "inline"!) wherever possible. Typically your styles would be included in a stylesheet instead of in a style attribute directly on the element. I included the fix (display: block) in the attribute to match the code style of your html.
I don't know why, but if you float the image the problem goes away.
<img src="http://www.whitepages.com/common/images/sprite_stars.gif?1343868502" id="stars" style="width:100%; float: left;" />
So, the answer to fix your problem: http://jsfiddle.net/5BEsZ/2/
If anyone could explain why this happens?
I was just wondering if there was any disadvantages for having empty divs in place in order to have a layout that I desire. Is there any other way around having hidden divs because I know that it adds to messy code.
See images below for what I am trying to demonstrate:
As you can see, the bullet points on the left are level with the h2 element but when I add a h2 element before the bullet points, it lowers them to the level of the paragraph (which is how I want it). Obviously I can make this h2 element invisible and therefore achieve my desired effect but is there more of a professional way of doing this?
But why you want to do that? Whats margin-top property for?
I'll go lil brief here, you should first learn floats than go for positioning, also learn what block and inline elements are, you got a lot of CSS things out there, margins,paddings` etc, take a look at box-model too so that you don't pull your hair later
And if you want to stick to a dirty markup than empty div's and br are options for you, but you won't get a specific height from top using br so for that you need to use an empty div but DON'T USE THIS
Two suggestions which will provide a quick fix:
Margin-top on the bullet points element or.
Add an H2 with a non-breaking space inside it e.g.
<h2> </h2>
If you want to add extra space without CSS, you can use <br/>
tags - its definitely a much better than empty divs, which is messy and a bad practice.
CSS is really the best way, though.
Give the h2 a width so it takes up the entire rest of the row. The bullet list will then automatically drop to the same height as the left paragraphs.
Or, give the bullet list a margin-top or padding-top.
I suggest that you use either margin-top for the second div or margin-bottom for the first one.
Example: If the hidden div's height is 100px, you better write: <div style="margin-bottom:100px">...</div>
so what I'm trying to do basically is have the HTML document extend vertically as I add more text, and at the moment it's just giving me some really weird problems, such as:
The body won't extend downward as I add more text
The footer isn't displaying at all at this point
There are some weird symbols being inserted into the document
The only way I know how to position things is absolute, and I don't know if this is causing some problems (such as getting text under the "Home" image?)
Here's the jFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/9nYgb/
Any help is appreciated greatly, thank you!
Absolute positioning does tend to cause problems like that. Relative positioning is simple ... instead of using the top-left corner of the document as the origin for reference, the top-left corner of where the element was supposed to be is used as a reference. So <div style="position:relative;top:10px;"> will result in the element being 10px below where it would have been had no style information been provided.
When you position elements absolutely, you take them out of the document flow. This means that other elements will act as if they aren't there. It's good for placing a modal popup div on top of a page, but it's not good for laying out a whole page.
In general, when it comes to laying out a page, I try to stick to a series of divs with height and width set. You can use margin and padding to adjust layout, and float to make items stack up horizontally to one side or the other. Sometimes I also need to set a div's display to inline or inline-block to get them to appear next to one another and act like inline elements. You can also place divs within divs to group elements together and treat them as one by manipulating the outer container(s).
In general I don't find much need for absolute positioning in a page layout.
This is bothering the crap out of me and I can't see what's not allowing it to float left.
I've set a margin-left of 120px to the header text (450 Set, 230 Set, etc.) and did a float left to the link element with the image inside of it.
Here's the link to the site where it's happening: http://cl.ly/6lQa
What am I over looking or not seeing?
Thanks!
It's the h2 tag that's screwing it up. Use a div tag instead and apply the styles that you want.
Generally, I refrain from using the h1,h2,h3,h4..... tags because they come with pre-done stylings. I prefer to create classes for all of my stylings and use div or span tags. Only if I'm doing SEO, I'll use some h1,h2 tags at the top, but nothing more than that.
On a side note, you should also try to get away from relying on float. It is not a good way to go..... different browsers handle it differently, and many times I get errors like what you were getting here. Instead of float, use position:relative and place the elements on the page by specifying the pixels at which you would like them (e.g. left:200px, top:100px etc).
I just started using BlueprintCss, which provides a great framework to easily layout pages. It divides the page up in a grid, and using pre-defined classes, you layout the page (without floats!). It's amazing, you should look into it.
You should move <h2 class="entry-title"> above the a element containing your image.
Set a width on the <h2> that will fit into the remaining space (with the 120px margin) OR better yet use a <div> instead of the h2 and style the font the same way
I'm learning HTML and I wanted to practice by recreating a invoice sent to me by Electronics Expo.
However, I used the background-image property and repeated it by repeat-x and now, the background stretches across the page so much that it has a horizontal bar to drag.
http://htmlpocketreference.110mb.com/index.html
You can see what I did in my link above.
Also, I would really appreciate some advice on simplifying my CSS coding. It seems really messy and I have to move every element once something changes. -.-
Thanks!
It's because you have relatively positioned elements that do not have a fixed width - these elements take on the width of their parents, which is the width of your invoice, and stick out of the page, causing the overflow. Give them a background color, and you can see this quite clearly:
Give the elements a fixed width to fix this, or alternatively, look to other methods of laying out your elements, like floating them.
In addition to this problem, you're also repeating the id attribute, which is creating invalid HTML. You should look at using the class attribute for multiple elements sharing the same style, or even better, look at using inheritance and the cascade to not have to give every single element an id.
Further reading:
CSS Positioning 101
Inheritance and Cascade from The Web Standards Curriculum
Problem is not the background. The problem is the position relative you're giving to the block level elements without defining their width...
The h2 elements like (Ship To:) and (Phone) and all the paragraph elements. You need to give these elements a specific width and it will work fine
Try giving these elements a background-color: yellow; to see how the flow inside the document ( for your debugging purpose ) and you will see what I mean