Question

I have a small problem. I am trying to align two divs side by side using CSS, however, I would like the center div to be positioned horizontally central in the page, I achieved this by using:

#page-wrap { margin 0 auto; }

That’s worked fine. The second div I would like positioned to the left side of the central page wrap but I can’t manage to do this using floats although I’m sure it is possible.

I would like to push the red div up alongside the white div.

Here is my current CSS concerning these two divs, sidebar being the red div and page-wrap being the white div:

#sidebar {
    width: 200px;
    height: 400px;
    background: red;
    float: left;
}

#page-wrap {
    margin: 0 auto;
    width: 600px;
    background: #ffffff;
    height: 400px;
}

Answer 1

If you wrapped your divs, like this:

<div id="main">
  <div id="sidebar"></div>
  <div id="page-wrap"></div>
</div>

You could use this styling:

#main { 
    width: 800px;
    margin: 0 auto;
}
#sidebar    {
    width: 200px;
    height: 400px;
    background: red;
    float: left;
}

#page-wrap  {
    width: 600px;
    background: #ffffff;
    height: 400px;
    margin-left: 200px;
}

This is a slightly different look though, so I’m not sure it’s what you’re after. This would center all 800px as a unit, not the 600px centered with the 200px on the left side. The basic approach is your sidebar floats left, but inside the main div, and the #page-wrap has the width of your sidebar as it’s left margin to move that far over.

Update based on comments: For this off-centered look, you can do this:

<div id="page-wrap">
  <div id="sidebar"></div>
</div>

With this styling:

#sidebar    {
    position: absolute;
    left: -200px;
    width: 200px;
    height: 400px;
    background: red;    
}

#page-wrap  {
    position: relative;
    width: 600px;
    background: #ffffff;
    height: 400px;
    margin: 0 auto;
}