How To Use Floating Elements To Improve Your Web Design?

Float is the placing property of CSS. Let us understand its purpose by taking a print design’s example. In a print layout, the images are wrapped around by a text as needed. This is usually known by “text wraps.” In its programs, the text box is told to do whichever; respect it or not. In case of ignoring the text wrap, the words can flow right out of the image. Floating in web designing is similar to all this.

To understand float better, you can read this article and contact a professional Web Design Company in Dubai for the proper utilization of floating elements in your web design. This article will light the use, applications, and alternatives (if any) of float on web design.

Type of Positioning In Web Design:

There are two types of positioning; absolute and floating. When CSS float property is applied to the elements of a webpage design, they act similar to the images in a print layout (with text flowing around them). These floating elements become a part of the web page’s flow.

Float property has five valid values:

· Left

· Right

· Both

· None

· Inherit

The left and right values allow elements to float in these directions only.

Both are the most commonly used and allow no floats in either direction.

None means that there will be no floating elements.

Inherit means that the element will assume the float value from its parent element.

In the case of absolute positioning, these elements are removed from the web page flow. Elements of Absolute positioned page don’t affect any other features, even if they come in contact with one another.

What Are Floats For?

Floats are useable for developing comprehensive web layouts. However, they are also helpful in smaller layouts. Although there are much stronger tools available for layouts these days compare to floats, it is critical to know about floats as they are still useful because of their unique and special abilities.

Clearing The Float:

Clearing the float does what the name suggests: it “clears” floats and restores the document flow back to normal. Clear the float is a sister property of float. There are five valid values of Clear:

· Left: It disallows any carryover floats from the left side.

· Right: No carryovers from the right side.

· Both: No floating elements on both sides left or right.

· None: It allows floating elements on both sides in the default setting.

· Inherit: This means that the value of the clear property comes from the element of the parent.

Three Techniques For Clearing The Floats:

Different frameworks ask for different float clearing methods. There are not many methods for clearing floats, but only three, namely:

1. The Empty Div Method:

It is true to its name. An empty div is added to your HTML code. This div has a CSS class attached to it that will clear the float. Div has no particular function or no browser default styling, and it is unlikely that it will be generically styled with the CSS.

Many who insist on semantic HTML think that this is not the best practice to clear floats as empty divs are not semantic. This theory is right, but in this method, the job is done correctly, so there is no harm in going for it.

2. The Overflow Method:

It depends on the settings of CSS property overflow on a parent element. If this property is hidden in a parent element or set to auto, then the parent will acquire all the floats by expanding and clearing it for succeeding elements.

Be very careful not to trigger unwanted scroll bars or to hide any content. This is a semantic method because it doesn’t need additional elements.

3. The Easy Clearing Method:

This method doesn’t set the overflow on a parent. Instead, it uses a smart CSS pseudo selector (: after) and applies an additional class like “clearfix” to the selector, to clear floats.

Alternatives:

There are no alternatives to floats when it comes to text wrapping around images. The easiest way to use floats is probably with an image.

The Final Words:

This informative article is based on the professional expertise of a web Design Company regarding floats. It will hopefully quench your thirst regarding knowledge about floats and how to use them for web designing. Contact Adweb Dubai to create a modern website of your dreams!