Technique C6:Positioning content based on structural markup

Example 1

In this example structural markup (definition lists) have been applied to the content. CSS has been used to style the content into columnar form. Each class absolutely positions the content into columns and the margins have been set to 0 to override the default behavior of user agents to display HTML definition lists with the DD element indented.

Here is the content to be displayed:

 <div class="box">
  <dl>
    <dt class="menu1">Products</dt>
    <dd class="item1">Telephones</dd>
    <dd class="item2">Computers</dd>
    <dd class="item3">Portable MP3 Players</dd>
    <dt class="menu2">Locations</dt>
    <dd class="item4">Idaho</dd>
    <dd class="item5">Wisconsin</dd>
    </dt>
  </dl>
 </div>

Here is the CSS which positions and styles the above elements:

 .item1 {
   left: 0;
   margin: 0;
   position: absolute;
   top: 7em;
 }
 .item2 {
   left: 0;
   margin: 0;
   position: absolute;
   top: 8em;
 }
 .item3 {
   left: 0;
   margin: 0;
   position: absolute;
   top: 9em;
 }
 .item4 {
   left: 14em;
   margin: 0;
   position: absolute;
   top: 7em;
 }
 .item5 {
   left: 14em;
   margin: 0;
   position: absolute;
   top: 8em;
 }
 .menu1 {
   background-color: #FFFFFF;
   color: #FF0000;
   font-family: sans-serif;
   font-size: 120%;
   left: 0;
   margin: 0;
   position: absolute;
   top: 3em;
 }
 .menu2 {
   background-color: #FFFFFF;
   color: #FF0000;
   font-family: sans-serif;
   font-size: 120%;
   left: 10em;
   margin: 0;
   position: absolute;
   top: 3em;
 }
 #box {
   left: 5em;
   position: absolute;
   top: 5em;
 }

When style sheets are applied, the data are displayed in two columns of "Products" and "Locations." When the style sheets are not applied, the text appears in a definition list which maintains the structure and reading order.