This layout is for old browsers only. See the modern responsive version here: 4 column responsive layouts
‹ Back to the equal height columns article by Matthew James Taylor
2 Column | 3 Column | 4 Column | 5 Column Download All (equal-height-columns.zip 8kb)
It does not matter how much content is in each column, the background colours will always stretch down to the height of the tallest column.
Each column is 25% percent wide with 2 percent padding on each side.
The CSS used for this 4 column layout is 100% valid and hack free. To overcome Internet Explorer's broken box model, no horizontal padding or margins are used. Instead, this design uses percentage widths and clever relative positioning.
This four column layout requires no images. Many CSS website designs need images to colour in the column backgrounds but that is not necessary with this design. Why waste bandwidth and precious HTTP requests when you can do everything in pure CSS and HTML?
JavaScript is not required. Some website layouts rely on JavaScript hacks to resize divs and force elements into place but you won't see any of that nonsense here.
The HTML in this layout validates as XHTML 1.0 strict.
You don't have to pay anything. Simply view the source of this page and save the HTML onto your computer. My only suggestion is to put the CSS into a separate file. If you are feeling generous however, link back to this page so other people can find and use this layout too.
This 4 column layout has been tested on the following browsers: