Background not showing behind floating divs

Question

what's wrong with this code?

The background disappears behind the divs when I add float: left to #text and #text2. But when I remove the float: left, everything looks good.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
            "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
#first{
 width: 200px;
 background-color: #345752;
}
#left_b{
 background:transparent url('img/left.png');
 background-position: left top;
 background-repeat: repeat-y;
  min-height: 30px;
}
#right_b{
 background:transparent url('img/right.png');
 background-position: right top;
 background-repeat: repeat-y;
}
#text{
 float: left;
 width: 50px;
 height: 30px;
}
#text2{
 float: left;
 width: 70px;
 height: 30px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id = "first">
   <div id = "left_b">
      <div id = "right_b"> 
         <div id = "text">text 1</div>
         <div id = "text2">text 2</div>
      </div>
   </div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

score 8 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:00

You container div #right_b is collapsing because its children are floating. You can fix this with the "Clear-Fix" technique. You may want to check out the following Stack Overflow post for a few solutions:

Which method of ‘clearfix’ is best?

One popular solution is to add overflow: hidden to your container div: #right_b:

#right_b {
   background:transparent url('img/right.png');
   background-position: right top;
   background-repeat: repeat-y;
   overflow: hidden;
}

Another common one is to add a <div style="clear: both;"> </div> before closing your container div:

<div id="first">
   <div id="left_b">
      <div id="right_b"> 
         <div id="text">text 1</div>
         <div id="text2">text 2</div>
         <div style="clear: both;">&nbsp;</div>
      </div>
   </div>
</div>

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 11 '12 at 06:03

Add this to your stylesheet:

.group:before,
.group:after {
  content:"";
  display:table;
}
.group:after {
  clear:both;
}
.group {
  zoom:1; /* For IE 6/7 (trigger hasLayout) */
}

And add the class "group" to your "right_b" element, this will fix the collapsing div:

  <div id = "right_b" class="group"> 
     <div id = "text">text 1</div>
     <div id = "text2">text 2</div>
  </div>

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 12 '10 at 17:01

I think you have to give #right_b also a minimal height:

#right_b{
 background:transparent url('img/right.png');
 background-position: right top;
 background-repeat: repeat-y;
 min-height: 30px;
}

Float elements are took out of the normal document flow, so if an element does not contain other "normal" elements, this element has a height of 0 (as it has no content).

Background not showing behind floating divs

3 Answers3

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