CSS Examples Tableless forms using CSS

Author: CSS Drive

This CSS example transforms a conventional form so it's tableless. A form that doesn't use tables for its layout is much more lightweight and semantically correct.

The CSS:

<style type="text/css">

label{
float: left;
width: 120px;
font-weight: bold;
}

input, textarea{
width: 180px;
margin-bottom: 5px;
}

textarea{
width: 250px;
height: 150px;
}

.boxes{
width: 1em;
}

#submitbutton{
margin-left: 120px;
margin-top: 5px;
width: 90px;
}

br{
clear: left;
}

</style>

The HTML:

<form>

<label for="user">Name</label>
<input type="text" name="user" value="" /><br />

<label for="emailaddress">Email Address:</label>
<input type="text" name="emailaddress" value="" /><br />

<label for="comments">Comments:</label>
<textarea name="comments"></textarea><br />

<label for="terms">Agree to Terms?</label>
<input type="checkbox" name="terms" class="boxes" /><br />

<input type="submit" name="submitbutton" id="submitbutton" value="Submit" />

</form>

By floating the "label" tag to the left, the text description of each form field appears to the left, resulting in a "two column" look for the form. The width of the "label" is controlled, so it will comfortably contain the longest text description in the form. I throw in a <br> tag with "clear: left" after each form field to prevent the floating <label> tag from potentially spilling over to content beneath it. Margins such as "margin-top" and "margin-bottom" are also used to add some nice margins between form fields.

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