div tags within a span tag / tableless css: span, tag, div, css, within

div tags within a span tag / tableless css

I am trying to design a page using a tableless css layout. Here is the problem: a modal panel opens up using ajax. The layout is contained within the modal panel which renders as a span (the modal panel), no other choice here. I am trying to create two separate cloumns within the modal panel, one on the left and the other on the right. For some reason, whenever I attempt this the controls within the left and right divs go out in a straight line horizontally instead of vertically in a straight line, even if I set the widths for the divs. It seems as if the div tag borders are not being honored. I have tried both static and relative positioning with the same effect. Could someone point me in the right direction to solving this problem?
here is a sample scenario:

<code>
<span>
      <div id="divleft" class="position:relative;width:150px;float:left">
       label
       textbox
       label
       textbox
       etc.
      </div>
      <div id="divright" class="position:relative;width:450px;float:right">
       label
       textbox
       label
       textbox
       etc.
      </div>
</span>
</code>

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Hi, the inline style should be defined as
style="position:relative;width:150px;float:left"
and not
class="position:relative;width:150px;float:left"

The text boxes and labels will align in a row because they are inline elements that do not cause line-breaks by default. You can specify "display:block;" for them (or use <br> elements for instance)

Also, spans are inline elements, and inline elements are not designed to contain block elements as divs. If it has to be a span, you could assign that span "display:block;" so it would behave as a div.

Have a look at this:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html>
<head>
<style>
span { background-color: #ddd; display:block; overflow:hidden; }
input.blockElement { display:block; margin:4px; }
#divleft, #divright { border:1px solid #f00; }
</style>
</head>

<body >

<span id="container">
<div id="divleft" style="width:450px; float:left">
<label>aaa</label><br>
              <input type="text" class="blockElement">
<label>bbb</label><br>
              <textarea style="width:400px;"> </textarea>
              <input type="text" class="blockElement">
              <input type="text" class="blockElement">
</div>
<div id="divright" style="width:450px; float:right">
              <input type="text" class="blockElement">
              <input type="text" class="blockElement">
              <input type="text" class="blockElement">
              <input type="text" class="blockElement">
</div>
</span>

</body>
</html>

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div tags within a span tag / tableless css

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span

tag

div

css

within

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

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