CSS positioning question

[paket]

I'm working on a database-driven site, and I would like to use CSS to position the web elements, but I seem to have run into a wall. This is what I am trying to do:

section 1 -------------------------
{dynamically-generated elements postioned wrt section 1's upper left}
end of section 1-----------------------------

section 2 ----------------------
{dynamically-generated elements postioned wrt section 2's upper left}
end of section 2 ---------------

section 3 ------------------
{dynamically-generated elements postioned wrt section 3's upper left}
end of section 3 -----------

Looks to be fairly simple, but the catch is that the elements are dynamically generated from a database and I don't know beforehand how many there will be and how big to make each section. I guess what I would like to do is to position according to the BOTTOM edge of a section, not the top.

I've tried this:
<div>
{dynamically generated elements positioned using position:relative}
</div>
<div>
{dynamically generated elements positioned using position:relative}
</div>

but the dynamically generated elements seem to 'overflow' outside of the area that I think should be contained by the <div> tags.
Does anyone know how to accomplish this?

 

[kg9ie]

I'm working off the premise that you'd like to know how many elements are in a section before you display it on the page.

Could you read the data for each section into section arrays before you display the page? You'd then know how many elements you have in each section and could presumably allocate sufficient space for them.


Good luck,
Todd

 

[paket]

Yes, that would be possible. I would have to do some finagling to work out the spacing along with font sizes, but that should work.
I was hopeing for a simpler solution, but I can always go with that.
thanks