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The Video Container

Name: The Video Container
Uploaded: 2013-06-17T16:38:47-04:00
Duration: 735 s
Description: In this video, we'll work on the center column in our layout. This column will act as the container for our HTML5 video.

12:15 with Nick Pettit

In this video, we'll work on the center column in our layout. This column will act as the container for our HTML5 video.

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[?music?] 0:00

[Master Class: Fluid Grids: CSS: Part 2] 0:02

[Nick Pettit] So far, we've added some of the basic essentials to our CSS 0:05

and we've started our fluid grid calculations. 0:10

Now we're going to move on to our center column 0:13

which will contain our HTML5 video. 0:16

First, we're going to style the div called phone, 0:20

so we'll go ahead and select that #phone { 0:24

and we need to first apply a width; however, this of course, has to be a fluid width 0:28

so we need to jump over to Photoshop to go ahead and calculate that. 0:34

So let's go ahead and switch over 0:39

and this is going to be the center column, so we need to go ahead and grab that 0:42

and it looks like the width is 310 0:48

and the context is the entire width of the page, 950, 0:52

so we can switch over to our calculator and calculate that. 0:57

310, which is our target divided by the context of 950 1:01

gives us that number there: 0.326315789473684 1:07

and we'll copy it, switch over to TextMate, paste it in, move the decimal point over, 1:10

and then make it a percentage, just like that. 1:17

And we should go ahead and put a comment on the right side 1:23

so that we know what it is we're actually calculating here. 1:27

There we go. 1:32

We'll go ahead and float this to the left because, of course, it is a column. 1:33

We'll set the background to the image that we created earlier, 1:40

which is in the images directory, so we need to jump out of the CSS directory, 1:44

go into the /images/ directory, and the image we want is called phone.png. 1:49

We'll set that to top center and no-repeat. 1:56

Next, we're going to set a background-size on this, 2:04

and of course, background-size is a CSS3 property, so we need to use vendor prefixes. 2:07

We'll start out with -webkit-background-size:. 2:13

We'll set the width to 100% and we'll set the height to auto. 2:18

So by setting a width of 100% and setting the height to auto, 2:25

the width will fill up the container 2:29

and whatever's left over will just fill up the rest, 2:32

and will maintain the aspect ratio of the image. 2:35

This is slightly different from what we've been doing previously 2:38

where we've actually been putting images inside of our markup. 2:42

By setting a background size like this, it allows us a little bit more flexibility 2:46

and allows us to actually put an HTML5 video on top of this image. 2:52

So next, we'll go ahead and do the Mozilla styling, 2:59

which is actually exactly the same as the webkit styling. 3:02

We just need to change the vendor prefix -moz. 3:05

And then finally, we'll go ahead and have a fallback 3:08

that will support browsers that actually don't need a vendor prefix. 3:13

Next, we need to set a margin-left on this column 3:19

and of course, we need to calculate the fluid grid for this, 3:23

so we'll go ahead and switch over to Photoshop, 3:27

select our marquee tool, 3:30

and the margin-left here will be everything to the left of the phone 3:33

before we hit the left column. 3:38

So it looks like we have about 40 pixels here, 3:40

and we want to calculate this against the entire width of the page, 3:44

so we'll go ahead and switch over to our calculator and say 3:48

40 divided by 950, which gives us about 4%. 3:52

We'll copy that number, switch over to TextMate, paste it in, 3:57

move the decimal point, and then make it a percentage. 4:01

We should also put the calculation in the margin, 4:06

just so we know what's going on, so we'll say 40 divided by 950. 4:12

* 40 / 950 */ 4:16

And then finally, we're just going to put some margin-top, 4:17

and really, you can put whatever you want here. 4:20

I'm going to put 35px just to give it a little bit of space from the top. 4:23

Now next, we need to move on to the video container, 4:28

so let's go ahead and switch back to our markup just so we can see what's going on here. 4:31

We just styled the phone, which is basically just the center column, 4:37

and then inside of our center column, we have this video container div. 4:42

Inside the video container div, we have the actual HTML5 video. 4:47

But first, let's go ahead and style this video container. 4:52

So we're going to go ahead and switch over to our CSS 4:56

and we'll scroll down here just a little bit. 5:00

We're going to first select our #phone, which is, of course, our center column 5:03

and then we'll select the #video_container {. 5:07

We're going to set a width on this and this of course needs to be a fluid width 5:12

so we're going to go ahead and switch over to Photoshop 5:16

and we're going to open up our Layers panel here 5:19

because this phone is actually a Smart Object. 5:24

So we're going to go ahead and open that up 5:28

and we need to calculate a couple of things here. 5:31

First, we'll just start off with the width. 5:36

Now, I'm going to select everything so that we can actually see the entire width of the phone, 5:39

which appears to be 1021. 5:45

So we'll go ahead and switch over to TextMate and record some of these values. 5:49

So 1021 = width of phone, 6:00

1978 = height of phone, 6:04

and then we're going to measure the video area, and this will be where our HTML5 video 6:18

is actually contained. 6:24

So the width is 853 and the height is 1280, 6:26

so we'll go ahead and write that down. 6:29

853 = width of video area 6:33

1280 = height of video area 6:37

And now, we're ready to actually calculate the width of the video container 6:42

so we want to go ahead width: ; /* 6:47

and take our target of 853, which is the width of the video area, 6:56

and divide that into the context, which is the width of the entire phone. 7:00

So we'll go ahead and switch over to our calculator, clear out what we have, 7:05

and say 853 divided by 1021, 7:09

and we'll go ahead and copy that value from our calculator and paste it in, 7:16

move the decimal point, 7:20

set it as a percentage, and now we have our width. 7:24

We also need to calculate our margin, and to do that, 7:29

we do need to switch back to Photoshop and make a few more measurements. 7:32

Now, the video is actually going to be centered inside of this phone element 7:37

so the only margin that we need to calculate is going to be on the top and bottom. 7:42

Remember, in our fluid layout, this phone could potentially be resized, 7:47

so we need to resize the video with that and that means that our top and bottom margins 7:53

need to be percentages, so we'll go ahead and select the top margin here, 7:59

starting from the top of the video container going all the way to the top of the phone. 8:05

The height there is 352 so let's go ahead and record that value in TextMate. 8:11

So 352 = height of area above video. 8:18

And then we need to get that bottom margin 8:25

so we'll go ahead select that, and it looks like the height there is 346 8:28

so we'll go ahead and record that. 8:35

So 346 = height of area below video. 8:37

And now, we're ready to go ahead and do our calculations. 8:45

First, I'm going to calculate the top margin 8:49

which will be 352 divided into the width of the phone 8:53

Now remember, the way that margin is calculated 9:01

is into the width, so we can't actually calculate this into the height. 9:04

I know that seems a little bit strange, but just bear with me. 9:08

So we'll go ahead and copy this because we also need to do this for the bottom margin. 9:13

So that will be 346 divided by 1021, 9:22

and now we can go ahead and switch over to our calculator, 9:27

clear out what we have, and do our calculations. 9:30

So 352 divided into the width of the phone gets us that number there. 9:34

We'll go ahead and move the decimal point and set it as a percentage. 9:42

We want the top and bottom to be set to auto 9:48

so we'll go ahead and put in that value 9:52

and then, we're ready to do the bottom margin, which is 346 into 1021, 9:55

so let's go ahead and do that calculation, 346 / 1021. 10:02

We can go ahead and paste in that value, 10:11

just like that. 10:18

And we'll go ahead and move those over 10:21

just so they all line up nicely 10:25

and now we have our video container. 10:27

So let's go ahead switch over to the browser and refresh. 10:31

And now, we have our three columns, so we have our column on the left, 10:37

which is our header, our center column, which is the phone, 10:41

and our column on the right, which is miscellaneous. 10:46

And inside of the phone in our center column, 10:49

we have our HTML5 video contained inside of the phone. 10:52

Now, my browser window is just set to some arbitrary size, 10:57

but we can already see that it's working pretty well. 11:01

If we go ahead and actually resize the browser window, 11:04

you can see that the HTML5 video keeps up with the size of the phone. 11:07

In my opinion, what we just covered is the most complex portion of this entire project, 11:14

mostly because of the way top and bottom margins are calculated 11:20

when using percentages. 11:24

When using percentages for the margin width value, 11:26

the CSS2.1 box model specification under section 8.3 says 11:29

the percentage is calculated with respect to the width of the generated box's containing block. 11:35

Note that this is true for margin-top and margin-bottom as well. 11:42

The important word there is "width," 11:46

so in other words, margin-top and margin-bottom percentages 11:49

are calculated with respect to the containing block's width and not the height, 11:52

as you might expect. 11:58

This is why in our fluid grid calculation we set our target to the top and bottom margins 12:00

but we set our context to the width. 12:05

We then divided the top and bottom margins by the width of the entire element. 12:08

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