Simon Willison’s Weblog

Positioning tips

If you’re still struggling to get to grips with CSS layout techniques (heaven knows I am) Dorothea’s latest will teach you more in a single post than many lengthy tutorials do in their entirety. Floats for layout (as seen on this site) are out—they work for small areas but anything larger can cause performance problems and other unpleasantness. Relative positioning is unreliable, which leaves us with absolute positioning and clever use of margins, along with intelligent use of background images for decoration. Dorothea explains these techniques in concise detail, and relates them to AKMA’s redesign.