Instructions

Zebras Drinking.

Clearing

Because all the columns are floated, this layout uses overflow:hidden on the .container. This clearing technique forces the .container to understand where the columns end in order to show any borders or background colors you place on the .container. If you have a large element that protrudes outside the .container, it will appear to be cut off. You also won't be able to use negative margins or absolute positioning with negative values to pull elements outside the .container or they will also won't display outside the .container.

If you need to use these properties, you'll need to use a different clearing method. The most reliable will be to add a <br class="clearfloat" /> or <div class="clearfloat"></div> after your final floated column (but before the .container closes). This will have the same clearing effect.

Footer

Adding a footer following the columns, yet still inside the .container, will cause this overflow:hidden clearing method to fail. You can place a .footer into a second .container outside the first one with no detrimental effects. The simplest choice may be to start with a layout containing headers and footers and remove the header to utilize the clearing methods in that layout type.

Internet Explorer Conditional Comments

These liquid layouts contain an Internet Explorer Conditional Comment (IECC) to correct two issues.

1. Browsers are inconsistent in the way they round div sizes in percent-based layouts. If the browser must render a number like 144.5px or 564.5px, they have to round it to the nearest whole number. Safari and Opera round down, Internet Explorer rounds up and Firefox rounds one column up and one down filling the container completely. These rounding issues can cause inconsistencies in some layouts. In this IECC there is a 1px negative margin to fix IE. You may move it to any of the columns (and on either the left or right) to suit your layout needs.
2. The zoom property was added to the anchor within the navigation list since, in some cases, extra white space will be rendered in IE6 and IE7. Zoom gives IE its proprietary hasLayout property to fix this issue.