Display and Positioning

In this course, you will learn CSS rules for displaying and positioning elements on your web page.

Start

Key Concepts

Review core concepts you need to learn to master this subject

CSS z-index property

Fixed CSS Positioning

CSS display property

CSS position: absolute

CSS position: relative

CSS float property

The CSS clear property

CSS `z-index` property

//`element1` will overlap `element2`
.element1 {
  position: absolute;
  z-index: 1;
}

.element2 {
  position: absolute;
  z-index: -1;
}

The CSS z-index property specifies how far back or how far forward an element will appear on a web page when it overlaps other elements.

The z-index property uses integer values, which can be positive or negative values. The element with the highest z-index value will be at the foreground, while the element with the lowest z-index value will be at the back.

Display and Positioning

Lesson 1 of 1

1
Flow of HTML
A browser will render the elements of an HTML document that has no CSS from left to right, top to bottom, in the same order as they exist in the document. This is called the flow of elements in H…
Start
2
Position
Take a look at the block-level elements in the image below: Bloc…
Start
3
Position: Relative
One way to modify the default position of an element is by setting its position property to relative. This value allows you to position an element relative to its default static position on the …
Start
4
Position: Absolute
Another way of modifying the position of an element is by setting its position to absolute. When an element’s position is set to absolute, all other elements on the page will ignore the element an…
Start
5
Position: Fixed
When an element’s position is set to absolute, as in the last exercise, the element will scroll with the rest of the document when a user scrolls. We can fix an element to a specific position on…
Start
6
Position: Sticky
Since static and relative positioned elements stay in the normal flow of the document, when a user scrolls the page (or parent element) these elements will scroll too. And since fixed and absolute …
Start
7
Z-Index
When boxes on a web page have a combination of different positions, the boxes (and therefore, their content) can overlap with each other, making the content difficult to read or consume. .blue-box…
Start
8
Inline Display
Every HTML element has a default display value that dictates if it can share horizontal space with other elements. Some elements fill the entire browser from left to right regardless of the size of…
Start
9
Display: Block
Some elements are not displayed in the same line as the content around them. These are called block-level elements. These elements fill the entire width of the page by default, but their width pr…
Start
10
Display: Inline-Block
The third value for the display property is inline-block. Inline-block display combines features of both inline and block elements. Inline-block elements can appear next to each other and we can sp…
Start
11
Float
So far, you’ve learned how to specify the exact position of an element using offset properties. If you’re simply interested in moving an element as far left or as far right as possible in the conta…
Start
12
Clear
The float property can also be used to float multiple elements at once. However, when multiple floated elements have different heights, it can affect their layout on the page. Specifically, element…
Start
13
Review: Layout
Great job! In this lesson, you learned how to control the positioning of elements on a web page. Let’s review what you’ve learned so far: * The position property allows you to specify the positio…
Start