3 columns layout

Here is a great place to start-
https://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=ThreeColumnLayouts
one thing you might want to consider is choosing a source ordered layout, meaning that if accessed from a wap or pda your page will show up like this:
banner/nav
content
left column
right column
footer
the reason I mention it is that alot of beautiful layouts use floats, in which case it affects the order of your source code, having to float the l/r columns with content last.
??

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ is using a 3 column layout. Made messy by it’s very busy author but it is pretty cool…

To add to flakkito’s comment:
It’s also a good idea to include a “jump to” section at the top of your document, so when viewed from a cellphone, pda, text browser, speech browser, etc., the visitor can jump straight to the content, navigation, or whatever. This is sometimes referred to as a “skip links” section, but I don’t like that name because it assumes you’re ordering your links before your content. Here’s an example that I use:
In index.php, just after my header (although some people might put it just before the header…to each his/her own):
<div id=”skipNav”>
Skip to content | Skip to Category Links | Skip to Search
</div><!– closes skipNav –>

Jpierre before we refer you to suitable portals how do you want these columns to behave? Do you want/need the columns to be different colors? If so do you want/need the color to stretch down to the footer regardless of content size? What browsers are you willing to exclude to get what you want (if any). Do you mind *hacks*. Does it need to validate xhtml and or css? Do you have any objections to using a bg image or do you want *pure* css. The more info we have the better we can help. The three column request is common in these parts. Good luck. Many people may be following this thread.

“Do you have any objections to using a bg image or do you want *pure* css. “
Not to be picky, but I wouldn’t want those new to CSS to get the wrong idea: background images are very much *pure* CSS. The background property (and all its sub-properties like background-image, etc) are very much a part of the official CSS specifications. The middle “S” stands for “Sytle”, after all ??
The whole idea of CSS is to separate style (presentation) from content.
I do, however, understand Anon’s point about background images (at least I *think* I know what he/she was referring to.) Sometimes, in a 3-column layout, if the middle column is longer than the side columns (has more content), any background color assiciated with a side column (to create a sidebar effect) will stop at the end of the sidebar data. So, many designers will place a background image on the entire “wrapper”, that will have a different color the width of the sidebar(s).
Now, on to some resources. These are just some examples that I’ve found, aside from just seeing how others have done it. I make no claims as to how well these work. You’ll want to experiment in as many situations/browsers as you can:
https://positioniseverything.net/piefecta-rigid.html
https://www.saila.com/usage/layouts/
https://www.realworldstyle.com/
https://glish.com/css/
https://www.bluerobot.com/web/layouts/
-Tony

Thanks Tony, and thank you to all. I think I have enough to start tweaking things…
As I said, for now I’m rather into getting a general picture of how layouts work. Thank’s also to Anom., but there’s no way I could get into the details your are refering to. Later, to be sure…
JP

Thanks. You might want to think about some of it now though. If you think too much step by step you may end up with a template which doesn’t suit your needs. While it’s in development you might want to park the css in index.php; then you are only dealing with one file and we can help more easily. Adapting WP to 3 cols might need a lot of *tweaking*. It always does. Good luck:-).
@tcervo Did not really mean to suggest bgs are not *pure*. But background hacks do remind some people of gif spacers and they try and avoid them and implement in code only. I am all in favour of precision and you are spot on about the difference.

Just in case you did not know.
There was a competition here and some really awesome CSS layouts were developed.
See if anything fits your requirement. Why reinvent the wheel if it suits you and the basic idea is to express yourself on ur Blog. That’s what I feel though…
https://www.alexking.org/blog/2004/01/25/wordpress-css-style-competition/

@tcervo: Just checked your site. Very cool. You ain’t one of them fancy web *designers* are you?
Kidding. Beautiful work. ??

Susubh: AFAIK there are no genuine 3-column layouts among the existing stylesheets. The winning design had a 3-column look but that was done using background images and one of the ‘columns’ had nothing in it but flowers. It’s also possible to fudge a 3-column look with index.php by absolute-postioning the list ids, but it’s much easier to grab a genuine 3-col template from glish or somewhere and add the PHP to that.

@willm. Amen to that. But:- link to the php index shurely?

https://www.ads-software.com/support/7/2771
here is a recently posted blog with 3 columns.

Seems cool tcervo. Do you do carry out? ??

I’ve only briefly looked at them, but these two are promising layouts for the whole 3-column thing:
https://www.pixy.cz/blogg/clanky/css-3col-layout/
https://www.positioniseverything.net/piefecta-rigid.html

Assuming you are following stop design and eric back to fixed width. Standby for complicated questions to do with matching the tags in index.php to the code:-)