Topic: Padding expands my width

Howdy,
Is it normal for padding to expand the width of its block? As in:

<div id="page_main"/>

#page_main {
padding: 15px;
width: 700px;
background-color: #ffffff;
}

Looked good before (with no Padding - and sized up well with an image above 700PX wide), but when I added the padding value, the block got wider (I'm guessing, 30PX wider).

Karl

Yes, this is normal. Annoying, but correct.

CSS 3 (i think) contains the box-width property, which does what you want - but it's not supported yet.

For more information, search google for "CSS box model".

Okee Dokes... will adjust widths accordingly...

I'm considering:
a div within a div, where the inner div has width:100% and margin:15px and outer div has the TRUE 700PX width (errr... am trying to simplify my HTML though as I am determined to learn pure CSS web design... no tables)

~Curious~
How many web developers out there avoid <TABLES/> completely?

Karl

The first question seems to be adequately answered.

The second question: avoiding tables completely is as much bad practice as is relying on them for layout.

Tables have a purpose.

They should be used for that purpose.

THey should not be used simply for layout, and they should not be replaced strictly for the sake of "not using tables".

Agreed. I still use tables for calanders, timetables and similar tabular data.

What ^they^ said. Tables have a distinct and defensible purpose. They have usability features such as summaries and heading tags and such. They continue to be supported because they continue to be important.

Using them for page layout is a corruption of their intent. Before css attained significant support tables were the only option for placing elements. Though there are exceptions to every rule, my opinion is that today css is better for layout (and other presentation purposes) in just about every case.