Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference

Name

float — NN 4 IE 4 CSS 1

Synopsis

Inherited: No

Determines on which side of the containing box the element aligns so that other content wraps around the element. When the attribute is set to none, the element appears in its source code sequence, and at most, one line of surrounding text content appears in the same horizontal band as the element.

There are some irreconcilable differences between browsers when deploying the float style attribute, especially for objects such as images. If you follow the CSS format and assign the float attribute to the IMG element, text tends to wrap as you’d expect in Internet Explorer (particularly when the setting is float:left). Navigator 4, however, requires that the IMG element be wrapped inside a DIV element, the latter receiving the float style attribute (and other style settings, such as margins). But IE 4 reacts poorly to this combination. The most reliable cross-browser workaround for now is to avoid style sheet rules for floating elements, and stick to the ALIGN attribute of the IMG element’s tag.

Due to the prior usage of the float keyword in JavaScript, the JavaScript syntax equivalent of the float attribute is align. Assigned values are the same, however.

CSS Syntax

float: alignmentSide | none

JavaScript Equivalent

align

Value

An alignmentSide is one of the following constants: left | right | none.

Initial Value

none

Example

IMG.navButton {float: right}

Applies To

All elements.

Object Model Reference

IE

[window.]document.all.elementID.style.styleFloat ...