Why Do My Icons Line Up Top-To-Bottom Instead of Flowing Left-To-Right in a Div Layout

Why do my icons line up top-to-bottom instead of flowing left-to-right in a DIV layout?

And now for something a bit more comprehensive:

You look like you just want a row of icons. Using your HTML, you would need to float the divs containing the icons in order for them to be next to each other. The reason why you need to float is because a div is a block level element (as opposed to inline) which means that nothing can exist in the horizontal space next to it.

You can achieve this effect by adding a float: left; rule to div.divicon

Floating does two things: it takes the block element out of the page flow allowing other elements to exist next to it (or flow around it) and it reduces the width of the box to fit the content. As far as the parent is concerned, a floated element has no height. To illustrate this, just try giving #icons a background color or border. You will notice that it won't show up - or show up as a 1px line.

In order for the parent to recognise the height of the floated element you need to tell the parent that overflow should be hidden with this rule:

#icons { overflow:hidden; }

This also works in IE however not always, so sometimes you might need to set a height or width or do a zoom:1 which tends to fix a lot of IE bugs (look up "hasLayout bug" if you want more info).

Now for a different solution:

You look like you just want a row of icons. Unless theres a reason for the images to be surrounded in a div (and in your example there is none) I would suggest to you to do something like this:

<div id="icons">
    <img src="/icons/text.png" id="icontxt" />
    <img src="/icons/pdf.png" id="icondoc" />
    <img src="/icons/rtf.png" id="iconrtf" />
</div>

#icons { /* rules for our container go here */ margin:0; padding:0; /* etc... */ }
#icons img { /* rules for your icons */ border:none; margin:0 2px; /* etc... */ }

I have removed the redundant divs and the redundant class attribute on the images. Since images are inline elements you wont need to screw around with floats and you wont have any extra divs that may cause divitis a degenerative HTML disease that affects many websites and spreads through bad advice. Remember, only use what you need - don't use it just because its there.

Hope this helps,

Darko

Floating elements within a div, floats outside of div. Why?

The easiest is to put overflow:hidden on the parent div and don't specify a height:

#parent { overflow: hidden }

Another way is to also float the parent div:

#parent { float: left; width: 100% }

Another way uses a clear element:

<div class="parent">
   <img class="floated_child" src="..." />
   <span class="clear"></span>
</div>

CSS

span.clear { clear: left; display: block; }

Center one and right/left align other flexbox element

Below are five options for achieving this layout:

CSS Positioning
Flexbox with Invisible DOM Element
Flexbox with Invisible Pseudo-Element
Flexbox with flex: 1
CSS Grid Layout

Method #1: CSS Positioning Properties

Apply position: relative to the flex container.

Apply position: absolute to item D.

Now this item is absolutely positioned within the flex container.

More specifically, item D is removed from the document flow but stays within the bounds of the nearest positioned ancestor.

Use the CSS offset properties top and right to move this element into position.

li:last-child {  position: absolute;  top: 0;  right: 0;  background: #ddd;}ul {  position: relative;  padding: 0;  margin: 0;  display: flex;  flex-direction: row;  justify-content: center;  align-items: center;}li {  display: flex;  margin: 1px;  padding: 5px;  background: #aaa;}p {  text-align: center;  margin-top: 0;}span {  background-color: aqua;}

<ul>  <li>A</li>  <li>B</li>  <li>C</li>  <li>D</li></ul><p><span>true center</span></p>

H1 on the left, buttons on the right, vertically aligned

You have a potential problem with that layout - what if your H1 is too long and so are the buttons? They will run in to each other. Because of this, no simple CSS will do - CSS doesn't do magic like that - it would have to imply some sort of solution to the above problem.

However, what you want can simply be accomplished using absolute positioning:

<div style="position: relative;">
    <h1 style="position: absolute; left: 0; top: 0">What a great title</h1>
    <div style="position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; text-align: right">
        <a href="javascript: void(0)">This link can kill you</a>
        <a href="javascript: void(0)">Click if you dare</a>
    </div>
</div>

If you are really afraid that the header and the anchor container might run in to each other depending on generated content, you can use CSS max-width and overflow properties to restrict their containing boxes to some sensible values. The overflowing content will be hidden but at least the layout will not break visually. I assume the following modification of the above code (pardon the duplicate) would serve the purpose:

<div style="position: relative;">
    <h1 style="position: absolute; left: 0; top: 0; max-width: 50%; overflow: hidden">What a great title</h1>
    <div style="position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; text-align: right; max-width: 50%; overflow: hidden">
        <a href="javascript: void(0)">This link can kill you</a>
        <a href="javascript: void(0)">Click if you dare</a>
    </div>
</div>

To round off, you cannot achieve this using a straightforward CSS property combination, because with CSS (and HTML), content flows from left to right and top to bottom, or it becomes absolutely- or fixed- positioned which interrupts the flow. Anyhow, it does not want to remain on the same line, and you as the layout designer are left with resolving ambiguities such layout would introduce, such as what to do when the two trains running from each direction front-collide with each other :-)

How do I stop a CSS layout from distorting when zooming in/out?

As this question still gets constant views, I'll post the solution I use currently.

CSS Media Queries:

@media screen and (max-width: 320px) { 

/*Write your css here*/

}

@media screen and (max-width: 800px) { 

}

Check out:
CSS-Tricks + device sizes and Media Queries

CSS float right not working correctly

you need to wrap your text inside div and float it left while wrapper div should have height, and I've also added line height for vertical alignment

<div style="border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: gray;height:30px;">
   <div style="float:left;line-height:30px;">Contact Details</div>

    <button type="button" class="edit_button" style="float: right;">My Button</button>

</div>

also js fiddle here =)
http://jsfiddle.net/xQgSm/

How can I vertically align elements in a div?

Wow, this problem is popular. It's based on a misunderstanding in the vertical-align property. This excellent article explains it:

Understanding vertical-align, or "How (Not) To Vertically Center Content" by Gavin Kistner.

“How to center in CSS” is a great web tool which helps to find the necessary CSS centering attributes for different situations.

In a nutshell _{^{(and to prevent link rot)}}:

Inline elements (and only inline elements) can be vertically aligned in their context via vertical-align: middle. However, the “context” isn’t the whole parent container height, it’s the height of the text line they’re in. jsfiddle example
For block elements, vertical alignment is harder and strongly depends on the specific situation:
- If the inner element can have a fixed height, you can make its position absolute and specify its height, margin-top and top position. jsfiddle example
- If the centered element consists of a single line and its parent height is fixed you can simply set the container’s line-height to fill its height. This method is quite versatile in my experience. jsfiddle example
- … there are more such special cases.

CSS: Left, Center, & Right Align Text on Same Line

Try this

UPDATED

HTML

 <div id="textbox">
   <p class="alignleft">1/10</p>
   <p class="aligncenter">02:27</p>
   <p class="alignright">100%</p>
 </div>
 <div style="clear: both;"></div>

CSS

.alignleft {
  float: left;
  width: 33.33333%;
  text-align: left;
}
.aligncenter {
  float: left;
  width: 33.33333%;
  text-align: center;
}
.alignright {
 float: left;
 width: 33.33333%;
 text-align: right;
}

Demo the code here: http://jsfiddle.net/wSd32/1/
Hope this helps!

=======UPDATE 2021:

You can now get the same results using HTML5 Flex to do this. No need for floating or clearing divs. Simply add Display: flex; to the parent container holding the items you wish to position.

HTML

<div id="textbox">
  <p class="alignleft">1/10</p>
  <p class="aligncenter">02:27</p>
  <p class="alignright">100%</p>
</div>

CSS

#textbox {display:flex; flex-flow:row wrap;}

.alignleft {
  width: 33.33333%;
  text-align: left;
}
.aligncenter {
  width: 33.33333%;
  text-align: center;
}
.alignright {
  width: 33.33333%;
  text-align: right;
}

Demo The Result Using Flex:
http://jsfiddle.net/jcbiggar1/tsopnf4d/4/

More on Flex:
https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/

CSS: How to position two elements on top of each other, without specifying a height?

First of all, you really should be including the position on absolutely positioned elements or you will come across odd and confusing behavior; you probably want to add top: 0; left: 0 to the CSS for both of your absolutely positioned elements. You'll also want to have position: relative on .container_row if you want the absolutely positioned elements to be positioned with respect to their parent rather than the document's body:

If the element has 'position: absolute', the containing block is established by the nearest ancestor with a 'position' of 'absolute', 'relative' or 'fixed' ...

Your problem is that position: absolute removes elements from the normal flow:

It is removed from the normal flow entirely (it has no impact on later siblings). An absolutely positioned box establishes a new containing block for normal flow children and absolutely (but not fixed) positioned descendants. However, the contents of an absolutely positioned element do not flow around any other boxes.

This means that absolutely positioned elements have no effect whatsoever on their parent element's size and your first <div class="container_row"> will have a height of zero.

So you can't do what you're trying to do with absolutely positioned elements unless you know how tall they're going to be (or, equivalently, you can specify their height). If you can specify the heights then you can put the same heights on the .container_row and everything will line up; you could also put a margin-top on the second .container_row to leave room for the absolutely positioned elements. For example:

http://jsfiddle.net/ambiguous/zVBDc/

Why Do My Icons Line Up Top-To-Bottom Instead of Flowing Left-To-Right in a Div Layout