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How to create a multi-column list?
(8 answers)
Closed 4 months ago.
I'm trying to put together a small thumbnail gallery and have run into a slight snag. Structure is very basic and is as follows:
[parent container]
[x number of child elements]
[/parent container]
I want my child elements to load into the parent container like so:
example 1
[0][2][4][6][8]
[1][3][5][7][9]
What I want to know is if there is a pure CSS solution to this or if I'll have to position my elements with javascript.
Knowing that the browser wants to load the items in like this
example2
[0][1][2][3][4]
[5][6][7][8][9]
I'm pretty sure that there isn't a non-javascript way of achieving this but I wanted to ask if anyone had any ideas or experience with this kind of layout.
The ultimate goal is to accomplish 2 things:
1. Have the parent container grow horizontally as new elements are added to it.
2. Keep the 2 row layout as described in example 1.
See update below
I think I came to a pure CSS3 solution, involving 3d transformation: you can look a webkit only demo here: http://jsfiddle.net/7fUxz/
basically, the idea behind this demo is starting from a basic element displacement, floating both wrapper and children elements - I used <ul><li> for the sake of simplicity and made a clear:left starting form li:nth-child(2n+1) - in this way:
[0][1]
[2][3]
[4][5]
[6]...
then I rotateZ the ul so that the whole list is rotated by -90deg and then repositioned with translateX/Y for the right alignment.
But also list items will be rotated: so an inverse Z-rotation is applied to every <li>. Another rotation of 180deg along X-axis is also necessary to give list-items the correct order. Even in this case some adjustments with X|Y translation is needed
The result is
[0][2][4][6][8]
[1][3][5][7]...
In 3rd revision of the fiddle http://jsfiddle.net/7fUxz/3/ you can see how to adjust some properties on the list so that the elements before and after are correctly positioned.
Note: this demo is working only on webkit. For a list of browser supporting 3D-transforms look at http://caniuse.com/transforms3d
Update
I've done further experiment: if you apply a float:right (instead of float:left) to each <li> 3D Transformations are no longer needed (because elements are already in the right order by row when <ul> is rotated) and the css rules are greatly simplified
[1][0]
[3][2]
[5][4]
...[6]
so this fork
http://jsfiddle.net/fcalderan/2BDxE/
has an increased support (surprisingly even more respect CSS3 *-columns usage), since it works even on Firefox 3.5, Opera 10.5 and probably MSIE 9 (I haven't tested this) : http://caniuse.com/transforms2d .
For older IE consider to serve an alternative style (via conditional comments) or some kind of js/activeX effect using Matrix Filter
Without knowing too much of how the information is being pulled in, there is a pure-CSS way using CSS3 multi-columns. BUt, it's CSS3 and the multi-column module only works with the latest version of Firefox and Webkit browsers; as far as I know IE9 still does not support it.
You can read more about CSS3 multi-columns via the following links and how to use them properly.
http://www.csscripting.com/css-multi-column/
http://kmsm.ca/2010/an-almost-complete-guide-to-css3-multi-column-layouts/
There is also a column script that I've used once before, though a bit old, may help you.
http://www.csscripting.com/css-multi-column/
Hope this helps!
Related
I am modifying a website that currently uses a <table> for a price list.
Because tables obviously don't break + wrap, on a mobile device the right hand side of the table disappears of the right side of the screen.
I'd like to use CSS to make this price list responsive, so that when the browser runs out of width it renders the next column underneath. This is simple enough if I stop using a single table and use float:left, but in this case I want the name of the cottage to be repeated (the first column) when a horizontal break occurs.
Is this possible? If so, how would I achieve it?
Peter, a better way to construct this to do what your aiming for is not to use the Table element at all.
Instead, use a series of div elements and give them the display type "table-cell" on the individual divs, along with "display: table" and "display: table-row" where needed for for rows and the overall table.
See: http://www.senktec.com/2014/01/using-css-display-table-cell-for-columns/
For an example.
Once you've broken things down into indidvidual div's, your then free to place those divs where you see fit, You could with a little bit of re-layout in the structure of the divs, put a new set down below the the first part of the table as you mention in your question.
However, once your using div elements, this actually opens up a more interesting way of doing things, by using FlexBox and more specifically "flex-wrap".
Flexbox and it's wrapping modes will do exactly what your trying to achieve, you just need to make the parent container "display: flex", add a flex wrap css rule, and the immediate div children of the container will take care of themselves.
Flexbox is fully supported by ALL mainstream browsers these days, and the various table display modes have been around since HTML4, so your not going to have an issue with any of it working. Flex also largely works on IE11, with a few minor edge cases (I implemented an online designer for a company 3 years ago when flexbox was first introduced and the target was IE11).
With the individual div approach, and if your targeting reasonable recent browsers you can actually go one step further and use CSS media queries to adjust things for different display widths
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Media_Queries/Using_media_queries
and you can even now do some feature detection is CSS too
https://css-tricks.com/using-feature-detection-to-write-css-with-cross-browser-support/
The only thing I can't come up with a possible solution for in pure CSS is the repeating of the cottage names column, although I suspect you might actually be able to conjure something up using "data attributes" and css rules targeting those attributes to get the text of the column name into an "element::before" pseudo css rule of some kind, I'd need to sit and spend a day playing with that idea to come up with anything concrete though.
Basically this example works great on chrome and firefox but the marked table (marked with the "this table" comment) doesn't fill the whole container in IE. I want it to look like his brothers to the left. I've been looking at it for the last 30+ minutes wondering what in the world is causing it not to work. I could use the help of a 2nd pair of eyes
The whole thing is quite huge, the problem table is towards the end of the html.
The other tables that are filling up the container all have a wrapper div with a height declared on them but its missing on that one table that is not stretching. Add it and it works fine:
http://jsfiddle.net/aVkC8/1/
Oh and: Holy inline-css styles Batman!, you can greatly simplify your code with defined classes and styles for your table.
Have you tried using something like Normalize.css in order to get consistency across browsers?
From the homepage:
Normalize.css is a customisable CSS file that makes browsers render all elements more consistently and in line with modern standards. We researched the differences between default browser styles in order to precisely target only the styles that need normalizing.
Browsers I'm using for testing: IE, Chrome, FF;
Ideal layout example pdf: http://designobvio.us/dov2/Homepage1.pdf
Heres the link to the direct page http://designobvio.us/dov2/index.html
While Grid systems are excellent for laying out by width, I always stumble when using height constants.
Inside my code I have 2 major problems:
Ideally, I want to be encapsulate sections of my code by using
parent div that controls the height, margin-top. I've tried to
create this div colored a pale green and padded it for visuals.
this class is shown here:
siteBody #businessSection{ padding-bottom:200px; background:#0F9;}
I've also demonstrated idea in this imageURL: http://www.designobvio.us/dov2/Homepage1Encapulate.pdf
While trying to do this I've come up completely empty handed.
2.So next, I tried breaking down each section individually by using a class .businessInfo
#siteBody .businessInfo{height:200px; background:#ccc;}
Unfortunately this also didnt work and I have no idea why because all the grids line up perfectly.
I hope what I've stated above is understandable. I prefer solution one; however, if not possible 2 will work.
If I'm missing anything I'll response ASAP.
Thanks!
this problem stems from the use of float. For example problem : http://jsfiddle.net/GAvcL/
you can use clear attribute for solve problem.
Solution:
http://jsfiddle.net/qeDs3/
This is a common problem in html. Before closing the div that encapsulates the divs using float, use a div has clear attribute.
See the picture above. Each navigation tab needs to have 2 pixels separation on either side and line up exactly with the header image on the edges.
Now they would like to introduce a 5th navigation tab (and possibly a 6th). Is it possible to code this in a way where you could stick a 5th or 6th tab in there and everything would resize appropriately with lists or tables or some other solution? Still keeping the 2 pixels separation and lining up with the edges exactly? I wasn't sure if it was possible or you would just have to define the widths each time for each tab based on the math involved to line it all up correctly flush with the edges.
I think the best way is to emulate table behavior with CSS. So you can use a list, and still get table behavior.
ul {
display:table;
}
li {
display:table-cell;
}
Here is a demo displaying this with CSS and proper markup. Here's a demo of how it looks with an actual table. I'm not certain on IE<8 support for this CSS, so it may be something to be aware of.
UPDATE: Confirmed: This is not supported on IE6 or 7 natively. You may be stuck with tables or hard-coded widths if you want to support those browsers. There may be a javascript fix to support these display values but I'm not aware of it.
EDIT: I realized my demos were sloppy, so I made another that actually addresses your point about the margins, it uses the :first-child selector to remove the margin from the first link, giving the evenly distributed appearance. http://jsfiddle.net/wesley_murch/pe6wd/3/
It may not be easy. One of the requirements in most implementations of css horizontal menu type displays is setting a fixed width for each element. If you try and do percentages, things start to come apart. However, any thing is possible.
Have you tried looking at LESS or SASS so you can do simple math in CSS?
I've seen quite a few answers on this site which advocate using tables for a design because it can't be done using CSS and Divs... when in actual fact it can be done with a bit of ingenuity.
What are examples of things that genuinely can't be done?
The only one I've ever come across is vertically aligning a box within another box.
*edit: I suppose I'm mostly interested in unachievable layouts using CSS2
Vertical alignment of blocks or text.
Having elastic containers that stretch to the width of their content.
Having several "rows" with the same structure where "cells" are synchronized in width throughout all rows.
Having several "columns" synchronize their height (up to the length of the longest text block).
These are quite basic designer needs that appear in even basic design concepts.
Cells/columns issues can possibly be solved with CSS if you take IE8 into account, but it will be many years until its wide spread (even IE7 in 2-3 years hasn't reached the desired market share).
As for "ingenuity", it is not that good thing in software development. Tricks that your colleagues and you yourself after a couple of months will not be able to understand usually build up that code base that everyone either is scared to touch or determined to refactor/rewrite completely.
Remember the KISS principle. The simpliest way you do this, the more reliably it will work.
The answer to this question depends on a number of things:
How backwards compatible do you need to be? Including IE6 will decrease the capacity of pure CSS; and
How much of your site is fixed-width and/or fixed-height. There are certain things in CSS that become hard if not impossible in variable width and/or height situations.
Side-by-side content is a problem for CSS. You can use floats for this but if the sum of widths exceeds the width of the container, the tail end floats will fall down below. Tables are more capable in this regard as they will squeeze columns where possible to make things fit and cells will never be split onto new rows.
Vertical centering you mentioned. Its trivial with tables and hard or impossible (depending on compatibility and fixed or variable heights of the container and the item) in pure CSS.
You may also be referring to hover content. IE6 only supports the :hover pseudo element on anchors. Javascript is required for that browser for :hover-like behaviour.
Basically if what you need to do can be done fairly trivially with pure CSS then do it. If not, don't feel bad if you have to use tables despite all the anti-table fanatics (and they are fanatics) jumping up and down in horror.
If you want a relatively simple exmaple of this check out Can you do this HTML layout without using tables?. This is a conceptually simple layout problem that is trivial with tables and noone has yet posted a solution meeting the requirements with pure CSS.
"... when in actual fact it can be done
with a bit of ingenuity."
How about 'avoiding the need for ingenuity' as a thing that's hard to do in CSS.
;)
tables should be used for tabular data! We should always try to use the correct HTML for the given content in which to markup. So not just div's (span, ul, li, dl, strong, em ... etc) This ensures that the content is not just looking right but is right (for SEO and accesibile reasons)
By not using tables it allows us to transform the content from one look and feel to the next without having to change the HTML, see Zen Garden
For now though with current browsers CSS table like layouts can be done but are tricky. there are techniques to get round many of the issues, weather they are done though global wrappers with background images, or positioning fixes... where both articles also refer to using Javascript to progressively enhance a page to get those additional classes you may require.
or of course you could use some XSL as a middle ware to help do formating if processing from a CMS.
Alternate row colors in a table without manually (or with the aid of a script) assigning alternate styles to each row.
Determine one element's position relative to another. For example you can't use CSS to determine which position one box is in a bunch of floated boxes using the same class. Would be nice to for example know if one box is the first box floated, or the second, or the last.
Handle widows. A widow is a word that dangles off the end of a paragraph, that is a single word starts the last line on a paragraph. It's a big nono on print design, but in the world of web it's hard to control.
Floating elements in multiple columns, where text in each cell can expand the height of the element, but the entire row below must be pushed down if this happens.
--- --- ---
|AAA| |BBB| |CCC|
--- --- ---
--- --- ---
|AAA| |BBB| |CCC|
| | |BBB| | |
--- --- ---
--- --- ---
|AAA| |BBB| |CCC|
--- --- ---
An image cannot placed in exact center of a cell with align attribute.It can be done with some brute force .
Sounds obvious but you can't change content with CSS, it can only be used for styling.
Rory, I think you're absolutely right. Vertical alignment can be done with line-height, and creating lay-outs in CSS really isn't that hard. In fact, it's far more flexible when using absolute/relative positioning and floats.
People still using tables for design should really brush up with the current standards.
Going on topic, with CSS3 coming up it's hard to think of stuff CSS can't do. Image manipulation, content manipulation, advanced selectors, it's all going to be possible. But if I had to name one thing, it's that with CSS you can't (and won't) be able to rotate elements.
I was unable to use a transparency to create a variable-height text area across all pages. I believe it's impossible. I ultimately just wrote a quick javascript function to reset the height after the page load, to get the layout to work. See http://peterchristopher.com to see what I mean by transparency for the text area.
There is absolutely nothing tables can do that CSS can't.
There seems to be a common misconception that HTML & CSS should be easy. It isn't. If you find yourself wanting to use tables then its your CSS skills that need improving not the technology (although the technology does obviously have plenty of holes that could do with improving).