There are four positioning styles for HTML elements, which can be specified by a CSS style specification: static, relative, absolute, and fixed. Additionally, we can set the position style to be specified as inherited, in order to copy the positioning style of the parent element.
<div style="width:400px; height:200px; background-color:#aaaaaa; padding:10px; margin:5px;">
<p>"But what became of the young lady?" I asked.</p>
<div style="float:right; position:static; width:150px; height:50px; left:10px; top:20px; background-color:#333333;"></div>
<p style="width:400px;">"Do you really want to know?" he said, buttoning himself in his fur coat carefully. "I confess to the small malice of sending her Sevrin's diary. She went into retirement; then she went to Florence; then she went into retreat in a convent. I can't tell where she will go next. What does it matter? Gestures! Gestures! Mere gestures of her class."</p>
</div>
Above, we have the code for a container div element that contains three other elements: two p sections and a div section. We will focus on changing the position property for the inner div element, which is dark gray. The position specification is shown in bold and we will change the static specifier to change the style
static
The default positioning scheme is static, which simply positions elements as they appear in the normal document flow. The important point to remember about this style is that it ignores positioning specifications. So, if you set a position element like left, it will be ignored in static mode.
“But what became of the young lady?” I asked.
“Do you really want to know?” he said, buttoning himself in his fur coat carefully. “I confess to the small malice of sending her Sevrin’s diary. She went into retirement; then she went to Florence; then she went into retreat in a convent. I can’t tell where she will go next. What does it matter? Gestures! Gestures! Mere gestures of her class.”
In the static example above, the inner div section, which is dark gray, simply floats right. The text section, which comes afterward wraps around the floated div section. Also, the left and top specifications are ignored because of the static position specification.
relative
The relative position scheme acts like the static scheme, except that the element is moved after everything is positioned. We can think of it like this: All of the elements are placed according to the static rules. Then the relative element is moved from its static position by the amount specified by the position coordinates.
“But what became of the young lady?” I asked.
“Do you really want to know?” he said, buttoning himself in his fur coat carefully. “I confess to the small malice of sending her Sevrin’s diary. She went into retirement; then she went to Florence; then she went into retreat in a convent. I can’t tell where she will go next. What does it matter? Gestures! Gestures! Mere gestures of her class.”
In the relative example above, we see that everything is in the same place as it was, except that the element is move 10 pixels to the right and 20 pixels down. This happens because the left and top specifications are used to move it.
absolute
For the absolute specification, everything is first placed as though the positioned element does not exist. Then the positioned element, the dark gray rectangle, is positioned according to its containing element, the light gray rectangle.
“But what became of the young lady?” I asked.
“Do you really want to know?” he said, buttoning himself in his fur coat carefully. “I confess to the small malice of sending her Sevrin’s diary. She went into retirement; then she went to Florence; then she went into retreat in a convent. I can’t tell where she will go next. What does it matter? Gestures! Gestures! Mere gestures of her class.”
As we see in the example above, the absolute positioning means that no space is left for the floated div element and that that element is place 10 pixels to the right and 20 pixels down from the upper-left corner of the container because of the left and top specifications (Note that when the absolute positioned element is inside a static positioned div, as shown here, we need to nest an additional absolute positioned div inside the outer div. Otherwise, the position will be taken relative to an outer element–in this case, the whole browser window.).
fixed
The fixed specification works like the absolute specification in that everything is placed as though the positioned element did not exist. Then the positioned element is placed relative to the entire browser window. We did not show this example, because the behavior is too strange. The fixed element actually stays exactly where it is placed as you scroll up and down the page. It is very messy, and we will leave it to your imagination and simply say that the rectangle sits 10 pixels to the right and 20 pixels down from the corner of your browser window as you scroll.
Tags: absolute, css, element, fixed, html, inherit, position, relative, static, website, xhtml
Michael HallBy: Michael Hall
[…] If you program games in JavaScript, you will often find it necessary to clip the region of an image that lies outside of the viewport. The solution is easy, but not obvious. The elements in a game are generally positioned using the “absolute” positioning designation: For example, the line qrMadonna.style.position = “absolute”; in the program below sets the positioning that the image of the Madonna, qrMadonna, refers to to absolute. (For an explanation of absolute positioning, see our post on positioning elements.) […]