CSS: Text Flow Around Image

Text Flow Around Image Example

The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought runs gracefully free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way—marking the points with a lean forefinger—as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it) and his fecundity. (from Time Machine.)

You can see the text flow around a image. This is done by making the image float with attribute float.

Here's HTML:

<div id="x01759">

<img id="xfloat947" src="i/tile_B.png" alt="tile B" width="128" height="128" />

<div>
The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us…
</div>

</div>

Here's CSS:

#xfloat947 {
float:left;
margin:8px;
}

#x01759 {
max-width:400px;
}

Stop Flowing

If you have many floating elements, the position of the last item will be the position the next non-floating item begin. For example, you might have:

floatElement floatElement floatElement … <h2>…</h2>

The <h2> will be shown at the position right after the last flow, as if it is part of the flow.

If you don't want that, you need to stop the flow with clear:left in the element that comes after the float. Like this:

<h2 style="clear:both">A New Beginning</h2>

The clear can have values of left, right, both.

Usually, it is best to use this element to clear the floats:

<hr style="visibility:hidden; clear:both">