The float property is a valuable and powerful asset to any web designer/developer working with HTML and CSS. Tragically, it can also cause frustration and confusion if you don’t fully understand how it works. Also, in the past, it’s been linked to some pretty nasty browser bugs so it's normal to get nervous about using the float property in your CSS rule sets. Let’s calm those nerves and ease that frustration. I’ll show you exactly what the float property does to your elements and how incredibly useful it can be once you master it.

We see floats in the print world every time we pick up a magazine article with an image on the left or right with text flowing nicely around it. In the world of HTML/CSS, text will wrap around an image with the float property applied to it, much like in a magazine layout. Images are just one of the many use cases for the float property: we can also achieve the popular two-column layout using floats. In fact, you can float just about any element in your HTML. By learning and understanding float property basics, along with position property basics, you will be able to achieve any layout with confidence.