Question

I’m looking at making the transition from HTML tables to pure CSS layouts. So far, the one thing that eludes me is how to layout a page properly.

I can do:

• header
• left navigation
• content
• footer

So like this:

________________________ 
|      Header           |
|_______________________|
| Left |     Content    |
| Nav  |                |
|      |                |
|      |                |
|      |                |
|      |                |
|      |                |
|      |                |
|      |                |
|      |                |
|      |                |
|______|________________|
|     Footer            |
|_______________________|

However, on some pages I want to be able to divide the “content” area into something like the following:

________________________ 
|      Header           |
|_______________________|
| Left | info | info    |
| Nav  |      |         |
|      |      |         |
|      |      |         |
|      |      |         |
|      |______|_________|
|      | Other info     |
|      |                |
|      |                |
|      |                |
|      |                |
|______|________________|
|     Footer            |
|_______________________|

Anyone know how something like this would be done? Or even a nice website that helps with this kind of thing?

Answer 1

first layout preview (online demo):

html:

<div id="header">Header</div>
<div id="main-wrap">
    <div id="sidebar">Left Nav</div>
    <div id="content-wrap">Content</div>
</div>
<div id="footer">Footer</div>

css:

/* sizes */
#main-wrap > div { min-height: 450px; }


#header,
#footer {
    min-height: 40px;
}

/* layout */
#main-wrap {
    /* overflow to handle inner floating block */
    overflow: hidden;
}

#sidebar {
    float: left;
    width: 30%;
}

#content-wrap {
    float: right;
    width: 70%;
}   

Second layout preview (online demo):

html is quite similar to first layout, but we include one wrapper to #content-wrap:

<div id="header">Header</div>
<div id="main-wrap">
    <div id="sidebar">Left Nav</div>
    <div id="content-wrap">
        <div id="info-wrap">
            <div class="info">small info </div>
            <div class="info">small info</div>
        </div>
        Content
    </div>
</div>
<div id="footer">Footer</div>

css is also similar, by the way we added some css rules to target new div’s:

/* sizes */
#main-wrap > div { min-height: 450px; }

#header,
#footer {
    min-height: 40px;
}

.info { min-height: 80px; }

/* layout */
#main-wrap {
    /* overflow to handle inner floating block */
    overflow: hidden;
}

#sidebar {
    float: left;
    width: 30%;
}

#content-wrap {
    float: right;
    width: 70%;
}

#info-wrap {
    /* overflow to handle inner floating block */
    overflow: hidden;
}

.info {
    width: 50%;
    float: left;
}

update: improved styles