Nuno Silva

Wrapp a div around other div’s with float

Today i discovered something interesting with div’s.

Imagine that you have the following code:

<div id='mainDiv'>
   <div style='float:left'>Div #1</div>
   <div style='float:right'>Div #2</div>
</div>

And you wanted that the div named “mainDiv” to have a background color. Well in IE7 everything works fine with the xhtml code

above. But in FireFox the “mainDiv” there is an unusual behaviour.

Below is a image that ilustrates what you get in Firefox (on the left) and what you get using IE7 (on the right) with the xhtml code above:

Notice that the main div, in IE7, warps all content, but in Firefox the div remains with a minimum height.

Io solve the problem you could try (has i did) to put a height in the “mainDiv”. Although it worked (for the content that i

had inside the Div), you never know what the the height of the mainDiv is going to be.

The correct solution for the problem must be one that adapts the height the mainDiv to the maximum height of it’s content.

The solution is simple:

<div id='mainDiv'>
   <div style='float:left'>Div #1</div>
   <div style='float:right'>Div #2</div>
   <div style='clear:both'></div>
</div>

Adding the empty div with the style property “clear” set to “both” makes the mainDiv’s height extend to the full height of

it’s childs, making the xhtml generic for all browsers.

(UPDATE)
Due to the several solutions in the comments i will comment there here one by one.

Alternate Solution 1: the clearFix : thank to Joao A.

The solution in in fact very elegant and we only need to add something to your style sheet. The solution objective is to add

the pseudo element :after into that

“mainDiv”:

#mainDiv:after {
	content: ".";
	line-height: 0;
	height: 0;
	visibility: hidden;
	display: block;
	clear: both;
}

The pseudo element objective is to add some content after the element “mainDiv”. So the soluction passes by adding the

content “.”, removing the height of the content, hide that content and finnally clear both side of the div. in fact we are

doing the same has the original soluction without adding the extra div to the markup.

Alternate Solution 2: adding the float:left style to the “mainDiv” element : thanks to Vítor Pires.

This solution is actually very simple:

The solution is simple:

<div id='mainDiv' style='float:left' >
   <div style='float:left'>Div #1</div>
   <div style='float:right'>Div #2</div>
   <div style='clear:both'></div>
</div>

Alternate Solution 3: adding the overflow style to the “mainDiv” element : thanks to Jeff and href=’http://btm.anfo.pl/’ target=’_blank’>BTM.

very simple just like the previous one. Add the overflow style property with the value ‘hidden’ or ‘auto’.

The solution is simple:

<div id='mainDiv' style='overflow:hidden;' >
   <div style='float:left'>Div #1</div>
   <div style='float:right'>Div #2</div>
   <div style='clear:both'></div>
</div>

The only difference bettween the usage of overflow:hidden and overflow:auto is just that if you have a fixed height in the mainDiv, with overflow:hidden, the content will the content that surpasses the size of the div will be hidden, but with overflow:auto a sroll will appear.

The Solution 2 and the solution 3 are actually very good (and simple) to use in specific situation. if you want the content of the mainDiv to appear below it, than use solution 3 (or 1). Otherside, if you want the content to appear side by side with the div, use the float property in the main element.

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