Clearfix: A Lesson in Web Development Evolution
The web community has, for the most part, been a spectacularly open place. As such, a lot of the best development techniques happen right out in the open, on blogs and in forums, evolving as they’re passed around and improved. I thought it might be fun (and fascinating) to actually follow this creative exchange all the way through. To take a look at a popular CSS trick, the clearfix, and find out exactly how a web design technique comes to be.
The clearfix, for those unaware, is a CSS hack that solves a persistent bug that occurs when two floated elements are stacked next to each other. When elements are aligned this way, the parent container ends up with a height of 0, and it can easily wreck havoc on a layout. All you might be trying to do is position a sidebar to the left of your main ...