After about 15 years writing CSS, I'm still discovering things I don't understand...
Below is a simple page with an h1 element that is 2000px wide. As expected, this causes the page to have a horizontal scrollbar.
But the problem is, the parent div.wrapper does not expand to the width of its contents – its yellow background only extends as far as the width of the viewport. (Run the below snippet and scroll horizontally to see the problem.)
body { margin: 0; }
.wrapper { background: yellow; }
h1 {
width: 2000px;
border: 2px solid red;
}
<!doctype html>
<html>
<body>
<div class="wrapper">
<h1>Hello</h1>
<p>More content</p>
</div>
<p>More content outside wrapper</p>
</body>
</html>
Here's the weird thing: Try adding body { position: absolute } to the above CSS and it fixes it. The div.wrapper now extends to the width of its contents – the yellow goes all the way to the right of the document.
Questions:
Why does setting body { position: absolute } fix the problem?
Are there any better (more intuitive) ways to fix the problem?
Constraints: I do not always know the width of the inner contents, I just want the wrapper to always extend so its background color goes all the way to the right of the contents.
Let's start with this:
But the problem is, the parent div.wrapper does not expand to the
width of its contents – its yellow background only extends as far as
the width of the viewport.
By default a div is a block element and a block element takes up the whole width of it's parent container so your wrapper in this case has the width of the body which is the width of the screen. In addition to this we are facing an overflow as the child content width is bigger than the parent width and by default:
Content is not clipped and may be rendered outside the padding boxref
This explain why the background doesn't cover the h1 as this one is rendred outside.
To change this behavior we have two solutions:
We change the behavior of overflow by specifing a value different from visible (the default one). By doing this you will also notice some changes to margin because you are also facing a margin collapsing (margin of h1 and p are collpasing with the margin of div.wrapper).
body {
margin: 0;
}
.wrapper {
background: yellow;
margin:10px 0;
}
h1 {
width: 2000px;
border: 2px solid red;
}
<div class="wrapper" style="overflow: auto;">
<h1>Hello</h1>
<p>More content</p>
</div>
<div class="wrapper" style="overflow: hidden;">
<h1>Hello</h1>
<p>More content</p>
</div>
<div class="wrapper" style="overflow: scroll;">
<h1>Hello</h1>
<p>More content</p>
</div>
<p>More content outside wrapper</p>
We change the display property of the element to something else than block. We can for example use inline-block or inline-flex and in this case the wrapper will fit the content of its element and he will overflow the body
body {
margin: 0;
}
.wrapper {
background: yellow;
display: inline-block;
}
h1 {
width: 2000px;
border: 2px solid red;
}
<div class="wrapper">
<h1>Hello</h1>
<p>More content</p>
</div>
<p>More content outside wrapper</p>
Concerning this:
Why does setting body { position: absolute } fix the problem?
We all know what position:absolute means but the intresting part is this one:
Most of the time, absolutely positioned elements that have height and
width set to auto are sized so as to fit their contents. However,
non-replaced, absolutely positioned elements can be made to fill the
available vertical space by specifying both top and bottom and leaving
height unspecified (that is, auto). They can likewise be made to fill
the available horizontal space by specifying both left and right and
leaving width as auto. ref
You haven't told the div how to handle the overflow caused by the width of the inner element. Add overflow: auto.
body { margin: 0; }
.wrapper { background: yellow; overflow: auto; }
h1 {
width: 2000px;
border: 2px solid red;
}
<!doctype html>
<html>
<body>
<div class="wrapper">
<h1>Hello</h1>
<p>More content</p>
</div>
<p>More content outside wrapper</p>
</body>
</html>
I do not believe that there is an obvious reason why adding position: absolute to the body fixes this. It does take body out of the document flow, but body is the container for all the content. So I would describe it as a quirk.
We could describe body as being the initial constraint for the width of the content, the .wrapper. Being absolute removes this constraint. Actually, it likely remove the width constraint for any further elements on the page, so they will probably all expand to contain any inner content.
Yeah, you can use width: fit-content;
MDN describes it as;
fit-content
The larger of:
the intrinsic minimum width
the smaller of the intrinsic preferred width and the available width
It works as expected; the containing element expands. But, as usual, IE lags behind and doesn't support it...
EDIT To be clear; this specification is still in Working Draft status, and as such should not be used in production environments (except if you don't care about Internet Explorer).
Related
I'm building an angular application that frequently uses nested views. Certain views, however, are taller than the other elements on the page and end up extending well beyond the end of the parent view.
I'm using Ryan Fait's Sticky Footer so I have a wrapper around a containing div set to height:100% and I would have expected the page to just adapt and move the footer to the bottom of the nested view however I'm seeing the style elements of the footer border and background-color are remaining at end of the parent div while the content of the footer is being pushed to the end of the nested div.
Including an image as I'm struggling with getting the language exact:
I'm really looking for any solution from fixing the css to something that seems hackier like changing the footer or using ng-if/ng-class on certain pages. I'm imagining I'm misunderstanding something about CSS/UI-Router but I can't really track it.
The code isn't really interesting but here is it?
CODE
.wrapper {
min-height: 100%;
margin-bottom: -50px;
}
.push {
height: 50px;
}
.footer {
display: block;
height: 50px;
}
.nested {
max-height: 500px;
}
<body>
<div class="wrapper">
<div>
<h1>Some text</h1>
<ui-view class="nested"></ui-view>
</div>
<div class="push"></div>
</div>
<footer class="footer">
<span>some copy</span>
</footer>
</body>
If you use percentage values for height (i.e. a relative height), the parent element heights have to be defined too. In your case you also need height: 100% on body and html, like
html, body {
height: 100%;
}
I have a layout where I need to use height: 100% on html and body (and any wrapper divs I resort to using) to achieve an effect similar to pages, so that the content on my first "page" is centred, scrolling down the content on the second "page" is centred etc.
The html looks like this:
<section class="page" id="p01">
<div class="spacer">
</div>
<div class="outer">
<div class="inner">
Some content
</div>
<div class="inner">
Some content
</div>
</div>
</section>
<section class="page" id="p02">
<div class="spacer">
</div>
<div class="outer">
<div class="inner">
Some content
</div>
<div class="inner">
Some content
</div>
</div>
</section>
and the vertical centring etc. achieved with this styling:
body, .page {height: 100%; margin: 0 auto;}
.spacer {
float: left;
height: 50%;
margin-bottom: -150px;
}
.outer {
height: 300px;
width: 100%;
background-color: #fca;
clear: both;
position: relative;
display: block;
white-space: nowrap;
}
.inner {
width: 41%;
margin: 0 6%;
height: 300px;
background-color: green;
display: inline-block;
vertical-align: middle;
white-space: normal;
}
.inner:first-child {
margin-right: 0;
}
You can see it at work in this fiddle:
http://jsfiddle.net/terraling/3V5rV/
The problem is the body background (here I'm just using color, but on my site it will be an image) leaks out into the body margins, i.e. the body content has a max-width and should be centred with white margins.
I can fix that either by... setting html background-color to white, as per
http://jsfiddle.net/terraling/yM53t/
...but body background becomes cutoff when scrolling into the second page (that wasn't a problem in the first fiddle).
Alternatively I could set the background image on a wrapper div and not on the body. That solves the problem of it leaking into the body margins, but it still has the same problem that it is cut off on scrolling.
(see: http://jsfiddle.net/terraling/3V5rV/1/ )
Any solution that involves removing the height: 100% declaration from any of html, body or wrapper collapses the layout (including replacing with max-height: 100%).
There's a whole lot of problems with this construct and not all of them can be solved, unfortunately.
The background issue
As you have seen yourself the background of body extends to the viewport if html does not have a background. That's solvable.
The float issue
When an element floats it does not contribute to the height of its parent element. So they don't grow (e.g. body does not expand). That can be solved if you can use alternatives. For vertically centering an element you could use display: table-cell e.g., which allows you to vertically center the content.
The height issue
This is where all hope is gone. height: 100% refers to the height of the parent, of course. The parent of body is html which in turn is the child of the viewport. You gave html the size of 100% (= the size of the viewport) and body the size of 100% (= size of html = size of viewport).
So now body has a fixed height and it can't expand meaning the background doesn't expand as well. Now one might have the idea to give body no size so that it can expand. But .page has 100% too. If a parent (in this case body) has no fixed size 100% has no meaning and will be treated as auto, which means as big as the content. And the content has a height of 300px. So the .page elements wouild no longer have the height of the viewport but 300px.
As for the collapse of the CSS, you should either specify the height specifically height:200px; or add padding to the bottom/top of the page so that the content wraps. You can also use min-height:200px; then add the margin-bottom:20px; to separate the pages. I would approach this at a specific height with the wrapper having the specific background-image and bottom-margin.
In order to center your background-image to the <html> you can specify the position as 50%.
This can be done by doing background:url('yourimage.jpg') repeat 0 50%;This will ensure the background is centered.
I'm aware that similar questions have been asked over and over, but I have yet to come across a solution that actually works for me. Picture the following problem.
Situation:
The body has a non-fixed background image that repeats both vertically and horizontally.
There is supposed to be a second transparent background image laid over the first.
Constraints:
The second background is supposed to stretch across the document, just like the background on the body. Mind: Not just the viewport, the entire document.
Even when the body height is smaller than the document height (i.e. no scrollbar), the second background must stretch to the bottom of the viewport (so any solution working with 100% html and/or body height is out of the question).
The second background's position cannot be fixed, because that would cause some sort of parallax effect when scrolling. The illusion that both images are actually one must be upheld.
It is possible for the body to have margin and/or padding. Both backgrounds should cover the entire document regardless.
Using a second background image on the body ("background-image: url(), url();") is not an option for backward compatibility reasons.
No JavaScript.
No actually merging the two images into one, obviously. :)
I have brooded over this problem for a while now and have gotten to the conclusion that this is impossible using only HTML and CSS2. I'd very much like to be proven wrong.
You should place a background image for two separate which covers each the whole document :
<html>
<head>
<style>
.firstbackground {
position:absolute;
left:0;
top : 0;
width : 100%;
min-height : 100%;
background: url('first.png') repeat;
}
.secondbackground {
width : 100%;
min-height : 100%;
background:url('second.png'); /* may be transparent, but why add a background then ;-) */
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="firstbackground">
<div class="secondbackground">
long content
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
CSS3 allows multiple backgrounds that are separated by commas, for eg:
background: url('topNonFixedBG.png'), #000 url('mainBG.png') no-repeat fixed top center;
http://jsfiddle.net/hs2WT/1/
Just use multiple divs...
CSS:
html {
height: 100%;
}
body { height: 100%;}
.wrapper1 {
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
background: url('http://khill.mhostiuckproductions.com/siteLSSBoilerPlate//images/nav/hixs_pattern_evolution.png');
}
.wrapper2 {
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
background: url('http://khill.mhostiuckproductions.com/siteLSSBoilerPlate//images/nav/yellow1.png');
}
.content { color: #fff; }
HTML:
<div class="wrapper1">
<div class="wrapper2">
<div class="content">
<p>Some Content</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
let the secend background to have the position:absolute;
body{
background:url("http://jsfiddle.net/css/../img/logo.png") #000;
}
#secBg{
background:url("http://placehold.it/350x150") ;
position:absolute;
min-height:500%;
min-width:100%;
}
<html>
<body>
<div id="secBg">
</div>
</body>
</html>
http://jsfiddle.net/5sxWB/
I am trying to wrap a div called content with another div that has a different background.
However, when using "margin-top" with the content div, it seems like the wrapping DIV gets the margin-top instead of the content div.
Code:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<style>
html {
background-color:red;
}
#container-top {
background-color: #ccc;
overflow: hidden;
padding-top: 10px;
border-bottom: 1px solid #000;
height:30px;
}
#container-bottom {
background-color: #F1F4F2;
}
#content {
margin-top:20px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="container-top">
</div>
<div id="container-bottom">
<div id="content">
Hello
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
So in the example, the div container-bottom gets the margin-top instead of the content div.
I found out that if I add a char inside container-bottom it fixes the issue.
<div id="container-bottom">
**A**
<div id="content">
Hello
</div>
But of course that is not a good solution...
Thanks,
Joel
What's happening is called margin-collapsing.
If two margins (top & bottom only, not right or left) of 2 elements are touching (or in your case, the top-margin of the inner div is touching the top-margin of the outer div), the max between them is used (in your case max(0, 20) = 20) and placed as far as possible from the touching elements (in your case outside the container div (the outermost element)).
To break this behavior, you have to place something between the 2 margins -> a padding at the top of the container div will do.
#container-bottom {
background-color: #F1F4F2;
padding-top: 1px;
}
#content {
margin-top:19px;
}
other solution (works, but may not suit your needs):
you can simply put a padding-top of 20 px in the container div:
#container-bottom {
background-color: #F1F4F2;
padding-top: 20px;
}
#content {
}
for more informations, this page explains it very well: Margin Collapsing
You could try adding a non-breaking space to the #container-bottom:
<div id="container-bottom">
<div id="content">
Hello
</div>
</div>
This is a suitable solution as it is often used to let a browser know that an element is not empty (some browsers ignore empty elements).
Margin-top is a mysterious creature because of its collapsing properties. I have found the easiest fix to this problem is to apply a 1px padding-top to the container-bottom div and change the content margin-top to 19px.
i have a few problems setting up a layout with horizontal sections that should have an automatic height depending on it's content.
This is my page structure.
<div id="#page-wrap">
<header>
<div class="inner">
#navigation
#logo floated right
</div>
</header>
<section id="services">
<div class="inner">
#some floated boxes
</div>
</section>
<section id="main">
<div class="inner">
#secteion content
#aside sidebar
</div>
</section>
<footer>
<div class="inner">
#footer stuff
</div>
</footer>
</div>
header, sections and footer are always 100% wide.
each section has a .inner div which is centered with margin: 0 auto.
.inner {
margin: 0 auto;
padding: 96px 72px 0;
width: 1068px;
color: #3C3C3C;
}
and as example this is my header:
header .inner {
background: #fff url('images/years.png') no-repeat top right;
position:relative;
/*height:100px;*/
}
#logo {
position:absolute;
right:70px;
top:15px;
float:right;
}
THE PROBLEM: if i don't set the header to a specific height the background image get's cut off. If i inspect the header with a develper tool like firebug the navigation inside of it is kind of outside the the header-box. So if i don't set the height of 100px the horizontal navigation cuts off the the background image - even though it's in the same header.
any idea what i have to consider here.
you state that it should have an automatic height depending on its content and then later state the problem is the background gets cut off. so, what exactly are you looking for? a min-height of 100px which expands if the content is larger? or did you expect the nav to be 100px in height (thus forcing the header to 100px)? its a bit confusing... at any rate, the header will have a height of zero if the height is not set and it's children are floats. it sounds to me as if you want the header to be 100px for the purpose of showing the entire background - if so, just set the headers height to 100px (as you've done)
edit// you've also stated that the logo is floated, but then show that its positioned absolutely - which is it? and how is the nav positioned? more information is needed
header, section and footer elements are not container elements - if you want them to behave as if they were you have to set them display: block - this will make them to behave as normal div would
I think this may be a clearfix issue--
you could try adding <div style="clear: both;"></div> before you close your header, or add the following properties to your header
.header {
overflow: hidden;
display: inline-block; /* Necessary to trigger "hasLayout" in IE */
display: block; /* Sets element back to block */
}
however if your navigation will have things that hang out of its container sometimes (like a dropdown), it's best to use something like the method at http://www.positioniseverything.net/easyclearing.html.
finally, you can also try wrapping the whole thing (header, and content) in another div which will only have the background property. that way the bg image will not get cut off.