Understanding CSS Layout: We fear what we don't understand

Have you ever felt perplexed by CSS, struggling to understand why the browser put the element where it did, and why it didn’t just follow the clear instructions you wrote? Do you think CSS is hard to work with?

By getting a better understanding of the concepts that underlie the language, you’ll learn to “see the matrix”. There’s normal flow, stacking context, offset parents… What are these things and how do they impact your design?