How to position three divs in html horizontally?

I am creating a sample website which has three divisions horizontally. I want the left most div to be 25% width, the middle one to be 50% width, and right to be 25% width so that the divisions fill all the 100% space horizontally.

<html>
    <title>
    Website Title
    </title>

    <div id="the whole thing" style="height:100%; width:100%" >

        <div id="leftThing" style="position: relative; width:25%; background-color:blue;">
            Left Side Menu
        </div>

        <div id="content" style="position: relative; width:50%; background-color:green;">
            Random Content
        </div>

        <div id="rightThing" style="position: relative; width:25%; background-color:yellow;">
            Right Side Menu
        </div>

    </div>
</html>

http://imgur.com/j4cJu

When I execute this code, the divs appear over each other. I want them to appear beside each other!

How can i do this?

I'd refrain from using floats for this sort of thing; I'd rather use inline-block.

Some more points to consider:

Inline styles are bad for maintainability
You shouldn't have spaces in selector names
You missed some important HTML tags, like <head> and <body>
You didn't include a doctype

Here's a better way to format your document:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Website Title</title>
<style type="text/css">
* {margin: 0; padding: 0;}
#container {height: 100%; width:100%; font-size: 0;}
#left, #middle, #right {display: inline-block; *display: inline; zoom: 1; vertical-align: top; font-size: 12px;}
#left {width: 25%; background: blue;}
#middle {width: 50%; background: green;}
#right {width: 25%; background: yellow;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="container">
    <div id="left">Left Side Menu</div>
    <div id="middle">Random Content</div>
    <div id="right">Right Side Menu</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

Here's a jsFiddle for good measure.

I know this is a very old question. Just posting this here as I solved this problem using FlexBox. Here is the solution

#container {
  height: 100%;
  width: 100%;
  display: flex;
}
#leftThing {
  width: 25%;
  background-color: blue;
}
#content {
  width: 50%;
  background-color: green;
}
#rightThing {
  width: 25%;
  background-color: yellow;
}

<div id="container">

  <div id="leftThing">
    Left Side Menu
  </div>

  <div id="content">
    Random Content
  </div>

  <div id="rightThing">
    Right Side Menu
  </div>

</div>

Just had to add display:flex to the container! No floats required.

How to position three divs in html horizontally?

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