I'd like to give a big sloppy wet kiss (or just a high five) to ScottyE for linking this. I always felt like I walked in halfway through the CSS story and like I just needed to play catchup through trial and error because try as I have, I've failed to find a resource as clear as this. In short, as a designer who never really learned CSS properly before today, this is a godsend. Thanks.
Well done. Everything is accurately explained using simple terminology. I'd love to see this expand beyond just layouts. CSS is overwhelming to beginners, but this is dead simple while still delving into deeper, more complex topics.
I'll note that a search of '"learnlayout.com" site:news.ycombinator.com' on Google doesn't bring up any other threads, but searching through the footer of the HN site does.
Page 15 doesn’t make inline divs, it makes inline-block divs. That makes all the difference. I think since the inside of the div is displayed like a block, a div is more appropriate than a span. It would be weird to have a span with block insides, even if it’s inline in its context.
This is a great tutorial and helps me a lot by just reminding me of things.
There's a mistake at http://learnlayout.com/float-layout.html though were they talk about clearfix and how they are using it without actually using it on that page.
I just thought I'd say that here in case the author reads it.
I just finished this book a few days ago. While some content is a bit outdated, it's by far the best CSS material I've ever read and helped clarify a lot of concepts for me.
For the clearfix can't you just use `clear:right` or `clear:both`? Also for inline-block you can also use the ie7 hack `display: inline-block;*display: inline;zoom: 1;`. Nice tutorial though.
This comment is tangential on purpose, but if anyone is curious as to _why_ we use the `display: inline-block; *display: inline; zoom: 1` "hack" to support IE7, then I will gladly explain it to you.
First, CSS is cascading, meaning a rule following another rule will override it. Second, attributes with an asterisk prepended to the property name are only picked up by IE7. Finally, in a nutshell, IE7 treats layout differently than other browsers. On IE7, certain elements get layout by default, but other elements can be "given" layout by using certain properties (that we refer to as "hacks") like `zoom: 1`. When an element has layout in IE7, it can be given a display of inline and act like inline-block. This is one of the many reasons why older versions of IE were such headaches for web designers. More info about IE7's hasLayout quirk can be found here[1].
If we apply what is described above into these rules, we get this:
1. display: inline-block is applied to the element.
2. on IE7, display: inline is added to the element.
3. on IE7, zoom: 1 gives the element layout, thus making it act like it act like an inline-block. Other browsers attempt to "zoom" the element, but since it's at "1", this is like saying "zoom the element 1x the size," so it does nothing.
> For the clearfix can't you just use `clear:right` or `clear:both`?
Not if you use it on the container itself, since it would apply to the interaction with floated elements that come before the one you use clear on - but here you open the container tag first, and then come the floats.
You could use clear on an element that comes after the floated elements, but before the container is closed, though. (you can also use the ::after pseudo element for this, maybe even in combination with ::last-child or something)
