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CSS Three Column Layout

November 10th, 2006 – Category: CSS Tips & Ideas – No Comments »

Designing a clean, flexible, three column website is more difficult with CSS than you may think. Unlike when working with tables, CSS styled content does not necessarily always flow in the most flexible manner. You cannot always expect CSS to expand with the content, in the same way that tables might.

This can cause difficulties when, for example, you might want to build a web page with multiple columns. Where table columns would all expand together to fit the column with the most content, CSS columns are typically controlled individually. As such, it can be a challenge to build a three column website where all columns are equal height and can flex with the amount of content within them.

Fortunately, solutions DO exist. One of the best solutions to this problem that I have found so far, can be found at this link: 3 col layout with equalizing columns and footer

In his example, the author has created a flexible CSS layout that will run a three column website, leaving the columns to be flexible enough to grow or shrink as content demands. This design also demonstrates the ability to keep the footer at the bottom of the page, regardless of lack of content. If there is more content than room on the page, the column will extend down. However, if there is less content than needed to fill the page, the footer will stay fixed at the bottom of the window.