英文教程:CSS的Float

What is “Float”?

Float is a CSS positioning property. To understand its purpose and origin, we can look to print design. In a print layout, images may be set into the page such that text wraps around them as needed. This is commonly and appropriately called “text wrap”. Here is an example of that.

In page layout programs, the boxes that hold the text can be told to honor the text wrap, or to ignore it. Ignoring the text wrap will allow the words to flow right over the image like it wasn’t even there. This is the difference between that image being part of the flow of the page (or not). Web design is very similar.

In web design, page elements with the CSS float property applied to them are just like the images in the print layout where the text flows around them. Floated elements remain a part of the flow of the web page. This is distinctly different than page elements that use absolute positioning. Absolutely positioned page elements are removed from the flow of the webpage, like when the text box in the print layout was told to ignore the page wrap. Absolutely positioned page elements will not affect the position of other elements and other elements will not affect them, whether they touch each other or not.

Setting the float on an element with CSS happens like this:

#sidebar {
   float: right;
}

There are four valid values for the float property. Left and Right float elements those directions respectively. None (the default) ensures the element will not float and Inherit which will assume the float value from that elements parent element.

What are floats used for?

Aside from the simple example of wrapping text around images, floats can be used to create entire web layouts.

Floats are also helpful for layout in smaller instances. Take for example this little area of a web page. If we use float for our little avatar image, when that image changes size the text in the box will reflow to accomodate:

This same layout could be accompl

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