The New Clearfix Method

149 responses to “The New Clearfix Method”

1. 

   Jeff Starr 2009/12/15 3:50 pm • Post Author

   @Ionut Botizan: interesting approach. It looks a lot like Dustin Diaz’ minimum-height fix for IE:

   selector {
       min-height: 500px;
       height: auto !important;
       height: 500px;
       }

   Do you think there might be any side-effects in certain conditions when setting the height to zero in IE and ‘auto’ in other browsers?

2. 

   Ionut Botizan 2009/12/15 3:53 pm

   P.S.: Check your Gravatar settings. My avatar has a PG (Parental guidance recommended) rating. You should use G (General Audience) if you would like to avoid that kind of profanity appearing on your blog.

3. 

   Jeff Starr 2009/12/15 4:03 pm • Post Author

   Thanks for the tip, Ionut, but I thought it was cute and don’t really have a problem with it ;)

4. 

   Ionut Botizan 2009/12/15 4:32 pm

   The 2 things I can think about are:

   1) The container for the floated elements has overflow set to hidden or auto.
   In this case, IE6 will apply the overflow and height rules, so it won’t stretch the container to match its contents. However, if you have overflow set to one of those, then you won’t need to apply the clearfix class, since overflow set to hidden or auto will clear the floats.
   So, everything should be ok in this case.

   2) The container has a fixed height.
   If that’s the case, you might need to use !important in the rule where the container’s height is defined. However, I’m not completely sure that this will be necessary, since floats inside a fixed height container shouldn’t cause any problems. So, once again, you can get away with it by simply not using the clearfix class at all.

   …And you were right! That solution is based on the min-height fix for IE6, but I’m not good at names, so I didn’t remembered who came up with that! :D

5. 

   Jeff Starr 2009/12/15 5:12 pm • Post Author

   @Ionut, thanks for the followup. Definitely seems like that method could be useful for clearing floats (and fixing min-height!). I haven’t tried it yet, but will certainly give it a try for my next design. Do you have any live examples where this technique is being used?

6. 

   Patrick 2009/12/16 8:15 am

   This is almost exactly what I’ve been doing for the last 2 years. Except I’ve been using: .clearfix {*zoom:1;} and have yet to run into issues with it.

   I don’t like the old method of using height to trigger hasLayout because it’s a valid property and I prefer to use valid properties for valid purposes. The proprietary zoom property is perfect for this: I’d never use it anywhere else, so I’ll never run into any cascading or inheritance issues.

7. 

   Chris Coyier 2009/12/23 7:11 pm

   This is definitely the way to go for clearing floats. As someone mentioned above, yes, sometimes I opt for a clearing div, but only in circumstances where you’d need to add more wrapping divs than you would clearing divs. For example:

   [ ] [ ] [ ]
-- clearing div / --
[ ] [ ] [ ]

   is easier then

   -- wrapping div --
[ ] [ ] [ ]
-- / wrapping div --

   -- wrapping div --
[ ] [ ] [ ]
-- / wrapping div --

   But that’s not my main point here. I wanted to say that Dan Cederholm has been spreading a clever alteration to this and that is to call the class name “group” or “container” rather than “clearfix”. I know it kinda feels like an irrelevant wording change, but that’s what semantics basically is. To me, it just FEELS better wrapping stuff in a div called “group”. It feels like you are doing it for organization rather than a “fix”.

8. 

   gaowhen 2009/12/23 10:16 pm

   As I know, IE6/7 can be targeted by *. So, maybe this method can be written like this :

   .clearfix:after {
       visibility: hidden;
       display: block;
       font-size: 0;
       content: " ";
       clear: both;
       height: 0;
       zoom:1;
}

   I wonder why you choose such a complex method to target IE6/7.

9. 

   Jeff Starr 2009/12/24 5:08 pm • Post Author

   @Chris: absolutely, avoiding the word “fix” in your code is probably a good thing, but I would rather just use the class (or ID) name of the target element rather than “group.” If you think about it, <div>s generally “group” or “contain” their contents, so applying a selector with either of these names is probably a bit redundant and not necessarily more semantically precise than “clearfix.” I think maybe just simplifying the name to “clear” would be more beneficial maintenance-wise. But either way, whatever works best for the individual designer is the way to go.

   @gaowhen: good idea, but unfortunately IE6/7 doesn’t understand the :after pseudo-element.

10. 

    gaowhen 2009/12/24 5:59 pm

    sorry I made a mistake. I should use zoom:1 to trigger the haslayout of .clearfix, not the .clearfix:after. So it should be like this:

    .clearfix:after {
       visibility: hidden;
       display: block;
       font-size: 0;
       content: " ";
       clear: both;
       height: 0;
}
.clearfix{*zoom:1;}

    How about this one?

11. 

    Jeff Starr 2009/12/24 7:11 pm • Post Author

    @gaowhen: um, I think Patrick already mentioned this a few comments up. But either way, it doesn’t matter because the code is invalid.

    Try again?

12. 

    Martin 2010/01/13 7:42 am

    In most cases .clearfix { overflow: hidden; zoom: 1; } is all I need. The zoom is moved to a dedicated CSS file for those obsessed with validation.

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