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Asked: 2026-06-05T16:19:48+00:00

I have the following code below however am confused as to why the div

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I have the following code below however am confused as to why the div element rightnav appears below the div element leftnav if I apply a width property to it. What am I doing wrong or have I misunderstood the use of floats?

CODE

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTMl 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
    <meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en-us" />
    <meta name="keywords" content="" />
    <meta name="description" content="" />
    <meta name="author" content="" />
    <meta name="copyright" content="&copy; 2012" />

    <title>DIV example</title>

    <base href="" />

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="" />

    <style type="text/css">

    * {
        margin: 0px;
        padding: 0px;
        font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;
        font-size: 100%;
    }

    #content {
        width: 700px;
        margin-top: 20px;
        margin-right: auto;
        margin-bottom: 0px;
        margin-left: auto;
    }

    #leftnav {
        float: left;
        width: 200px;
        border-width: 1px;
        border-color: #000000;
        border-style: solid;
    }

    #rightnav {
        border-width: 1px;
        border-color: #000000;
        border-style: solid;
    }


    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <div id="container">
        <div id="content">
            <div id="leftnav">left nav</div>
            <div id="rightnav">right nav</div>
        </div>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

Output

enter image description here

Now if I amend the code as follows by applying the property width to the declaration rightnav, the element appears below leftnav. I thought that it may have to do with the width of the div element content however there is sufficient width with the combination of both div elements i.e. 200px + 200px < 700px

CODE

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTMl 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
    <meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en-us" />
    <meta name="keywords" content="" />
    <meta name="description" content="" />
    <meta name="author" content="" />
    <meta name="copyright" content="&copy; 2012" />

    <title>DIV example</title>

    <base href="" />

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="" />

    <style type="text/css">

    * {
        margin: 0px;
        padding: 0px;
        font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;
        font-size: 100%;
    }

    #content {
        width: 700px;
        margin-top: 20px;
        margin-right: auto;
        margin-bottom: 0px;
        margin-left: auto;
    }

    #leftnav {
        float: left;
        width: 200px;
        border-width: 1px;
        border-color: #000000;
        border-style: solid;
    }

    #rightnav {
        width: 200px;
        border-width: 1px;
        border-color: #000000;
        border-style: solid;
    }


    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <div id="container">
        <div id="content">
            <div id="leftnav">left nav</div>
            <div id="rightnav">right nav</div>
        </div>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

OUTPUT

enter image description here

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    In your first example, #rightnav is not floating, but it stays at the right because it hasn’t a clear:left; rule. See here: http://jsfiddle.net/5sHdg/

    In your second example, when you specify a width for #rightnav, the browser has a explicit rule about the div’s size, so it renders it as a block element should. But it doesn’t float next to #leftnav because it lacks a float:left; rule. See here: http://jsfiddle.net/Br4Lm/

    So rememeber:

    1. Use float in every div that needs to be positioned besides another one, thus overriding it’s block element appearance.
    2. If you expect to have a div element below divs that re floating, be sure to include clear:both; (left, right, or both);
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