<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV>This is a common problem, but it's definitely possible. In fact, it was just written about recently:</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><A href="http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=6BC9D">http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=6BC9D</A></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">"In order to become a skilled CSS developer, you need to understand the </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">underlying concepts of CSS that make it work and not just how to </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">produce certain visual effects. The 'block formatting context' is one </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">of those concepts that drives how CSS affects your page without you </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">even knowing it. Most of the time, you don't need to worry about it; </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">it's just something that's going on behind the scenes that you don't </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">need to get involved with. Sometimes, however, the lack of a new </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">context can make elements interact in undesirable ways. The primary </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">reason for setting a new context is to keep cleared elements inside a </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">main content div from clearing floated sidebars. We'll use this problem </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">as a case study for how to establish new block formatting contexts and </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">to see what their effect is on the other elements around them."</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">The solution is different depending on what kind of (browser) audience you have, but there are definitely alternatives to falling back on a table.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">--ivan</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV><SPAN class="gmail_quote">On 7/11/06, <B class="gmail_sendername">Darrel O'Pry</B> <<A href="mailto:dopry@thing.net">dopry@thing.net</A>> wrote:</SPAN><BLOCKQUOTE class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> On Mon, 2006-07-10 at 15:26 +0200, Steven Wittens wrote:<BR>> ><BR>> > I say this even though I am a CSS zealot and have created several<BR>> > non CMS sites which have no tables and would do them no other way. <BR>> > I ended up using a single table in my design because in order to<BR>> > get the footer in the right place the left and right columns were<BR>> > floated. Once you have floated columns you cannot use clear in the <BR>> > content because the content will then clear the columns which is<BR>> > not what you want. You need to be able to use clear in the content<BR>> > so that you can float multiple images to one side and have them <BR>> > appear under on another which requires clear.<BR>><BR>> Non-sense. The piefecta layout and many others (such as <A href="http://drupal.org">drupal.org</A><BR>> itself) are 100% tableless and can accomodate clears in the content. <BR>><BR>> Steven Wittens<BR><BR>You may need an additional wrapper around you content to constrain the<BR>clear, or a parent with position: relative. I can't remember.</BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></BODY></HTML>