Sams Teach Yourself HTML and CSS in 24 Hours (7th Edition)

Hour 14. Using Style Sheets for Page Layout

In the preceding two lessons you learned a little bit about how to position HTML content using the default approach to CSS positioning, which is known as relative positioning. In relative positioning, elements on a page are displayed according to the flow of the page, with each element physically appearing after the element preceding it on the page. This is the way elements have been positioned in every HTML document you've seen throughout the book thus far. Although relative positioning has its merits, style sheets offer another approach that gives you much more control over how to position elements on a page.

This hour explores HTML positioning as controlled by style sheets. You'll find out how to carry out both relative and absolute positioning, as well as how to deliberately overlap elements and control how they stack on top of each other. You'll also find out how to tweak the margins and spacing between elements on a page. By the end of this hour, you'll realize why tables are now passé as a page layout mechanismyou'll realize that style sheets are just too powerful not to use.