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Fluid CSS: floating column with max-width and overflow
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4

8

I'm using a fluid layout in the new theme that I'm working on for my blog. I often blog about code and include <pre> blocks within the posts. The float: left column for the content area has a max-width so that the column stops at a certain maximum width and can also be shrunk:

+----------+     +------+
|   text   |     | text | 
|          |     |      |
|          |     |      |
|          |     |      |
|          |     |      |
|          |     |      |
+----------+     +------+
    max           shrunk

What I want is for the <pre> elements to be wider than the text column so that I can fit 80-character-wrapped code without horizontal scroll bars. But I want the <pre> elements to overflow from the content area, without affecting its fluidity:

+----------+     +------+
| text     |     | text | 
|          |     |      |
+----------+--+  +------+------+
| code        |  | code        |
+----------+--+  +------+------+
|          |     |      |
+----------+     +------+
    max           shrunk

But, max-width stops being fluid once I insert the overhanging <pre> in there: the width of the column remains at the specified max-width even when I shrink the browser beyond that width.

I've reproduced the issue with this bare-minimum scenario:

<div style="float: left; max-width: 460px; border: 1px solid red">
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit</p>
<pre style="max-width: 700px; border: 1px solid blue">
function foo() {
    // Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit
}
</pre>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit</p>
</div>

I noticed that doing either of the following brings back the fluidity:

  1. Remove the <pre> (doh...)
  2. Remove the float: left

The workaround I'm currently using is to insert the <pre> elements into "breaks" in the post column, so that the widths of the post segments and the <pre> segments are managed mutually exclusively:

+----------+     +------+
| text     |     | text | 
+----------+     +------+
+-------------+  +-------------+
| code        |  | code        |
+-------------+  +-------------+
+----------+     +------+
+----------+     +------+
    max           shrunk

But this forces me to insert additional closing and opening <div> elements into the post markup which I'd rather keep semantically pristine.

Admittedly, I don't have a full grasp of how the box model works with floats with overflowing content, so I don't understand why the combination of float: left on the container and the <pre> inside it cripple the max-width of the container.

I'm observing the same problem on Firefox/Chrome/Safari/Opera. IE6 (the crazy one) seems happy all the time.

This also doesn't seem dependent on quirks/standards mode.

Update

I've done further testing to observe that max-width seems to get ignored when the element has a float: left. I glanced at the W3C box model chapter but couldn't immediately see an explicit mention of this behaviour. Any pointers?

Peavey answered 15/4, 2010 at 4:53 Comment(1)
I recommend you use jsbin.com to demonstrate your problem. And also, to test proposed solutions. – Pargeting
F
5

Set margin-right: -240px; float: left; on the <pre> element to make it occupy as less horizontal space as possible and at the same time may overflow the parent <div> element with 240px. Remember to make sure that the <p> elements clears floating elements on both sides (clear: both). Complete example below:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" 
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
    <head>
        <title>Solution</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <div style="float: left; background-color: cyan; max-width: 460px;">
            <p style="background-color: magenta; clear: both;">
                Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. 
                Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. 
                Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit.
            </p>
            <pre style="float: left; max-width: 700px; 
                background-color: yellow; margin-right: -240px;">
function foo() {
    // Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit
}
            </pre>
            <p style="background-color: magenta; clear: both;">
                Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. 
                Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. 
                Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit.
            </p>
        </div>
    </body>
</html>
Florafloral answered 25/4, 2010 at 13:11 Comment(2)
Thank you sir. I've just become slightly more enlightened! – Peavey
The negative right margin is really a necessity for the combination of max-width and pre. Thanks a lot! – Mazard
T
1

I think this ought to do what you're looking for, but you might need to tweak it slightly to get it to work in situ.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
    <head>
        <meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
        <title>Test</title>
        <style type="text/css" media="screen">
            body
            {
                margin: 0;
                padding: 0;
            }
            #wrapper
            {
                float: left;
                width: 100%;
            }
            #content
            {
                float: left;
                width: 100%;
                max-width: 500px;

                margin: 0;
                padding: 0;

                font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;
                font-size: 12px;
            }
            #content-pad
            {
                margin: 50px;
                padding: 50px 0 40px 50px;
                background-color: #CCC;
            }

            p, pre
            {
                margin: 0 50px 10px 0;
                line-height: 1.6em;
            }

            pre
            {
                padding: 20px;
                width: 560px;

                background-color: #333;
                color: #FFF;
            }
        </style>
    </head>
    <body>
        <div id="wrapper">
            <div id="content">
                <div id="content-pad">
                    <p>Fusce euismod nunc vitae orci vestibulum adipiscing. Nam id quam libero, sed convallis elit. Etiam interdum, urna et imperdiet euismod, nisi erat commodo elit, sed convallis magna est quis sem. Fusce tempor aliquet est, et ornare eros vulputate et. Vivamus arcu augue, pretium vel fermentum in, gravida sed elit. Vestibulum ut ligula ac quam hendrerit ullamcorper. Phasellus id justo augue. Integer a eros ante. Vivamus sapien mi, placerat a viverra pharetra, dignissim sit amet ipsum. Fusce nunc nunc, tempus ut aliquet sit amet, consectetur sed quam. Cras ligula enim, bibendum eget luctus a, convallis sit amet nisl. Nullam in quam in lectus faucibus lobortis vel pulvinar ante.</p>
                    <pre>Here is some code!
We're going to make sure that it has a full eighty characters to play in.
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890</pre>
                    <p>Nullam in sapien vitae dui tincidunt elementum. Curabitur condimentum vulputate sem ornare pharetra. Fusce in dolor eget neque viverra sagittis a a orci. Vivamus blandit leo eget orci viverra quis hendrerit velit tempus. Donec in erat risus. Nullam scelerisque faucibus ante, ultricies tristique dolor laoreet sit amet. Duis sit amet tortor dolor, vel interdum ipsum. Sed sed nibh vel ipsum commodo cursus. Proin fermentum nunc in velit tincidunt imperdiet sit amet nec neque. Suspendisse neque ante, luctus sit amet pulvinar eu, congue laoreet magna. Aenean sit amet porttitor quam. Mauris hendrerit vulputate tempus. Curabitur mauris magna, laoreet congue rutrum condimentum, condimentum in sapien. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.</p>
                </div>
            </div>
        </div>

        <!-- this next element just maintains the margin properly -->
        <div style="clear:both; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"></div>
    </body>
</html>
Tamelatameless answered 25/4, 2010 at 13:32 Comment(2)
@icio: Thanks for the effort! While your solution seems to achieve what I was asking for, @knut's answer solves my problem by just the addition of two additonal CSS rules. – Peavey
@Ates Goral: My pleasure. Might I add that the #content-pad element isn't necessary for the pre to stick out, it's purely there for aesthetic reasons. – Tamelatameless
I
0

CSS:

pre {
    display: inline-block;
}

Works for Chrome and FireFox, which makes me think it will work on atleast Opera, Safari and IE8 also.

If this breaks IE6 you can use this selector to hide the rule from the browser:

div > pre {
    display: inline-block;
}

In your example (with extra characters added):

<div style="float: left; max-width: 460px; border: 1px solid red">
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit</p>
<pre style="max-width: 700px; border: 1px solid blue; display: inline-block;">
function foo() {
    // Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit dfsf sdf sdf sdf sdf
}
</pre>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit</p>
</div>
Internist answered 19/4, 2010 at 18:30 Comment(4)
No luck :( The content doesn't shrink. Try shrinking the browser width to something like 250px and you'll observe that the text passages do not wrap to 250px. – Peavey
I don't think there is any way you can achieve this without the use of Javascript - because of the max-width declaration. Pseudo: On load and when window is resized { if window width is less than max-width { set max-width to window width } }. And besides, very few people have screens that narrow. – Internist
Smartphone users typically have very narrow screens :) I'm particularly interested in finding out why max-width and float: left don't play out well together. You'll see that when the float: left is taken out, shrinking starts working fine... – Peavey
max-width works different for floated and block level elements because floated elements try to take up as little horizontal space as possible, whereas block level elements try to take up as much horizontal space as possible. – Internist
S
0

This might work

pre {
  position:relative;
  float:left;
  z-index: 1;
}

position relative makes the pre "pop out" of the dimensions of the column without removing it from the document flow, and float should adjust the width of teh pre to contain all its content.

Shewchuk answered 19/4, 2010 at 23:9 Comment(1)
The problem is with the <p> elements not obeying max-width when I have inline <pre> elements that protrude. – Peavey

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