how to force a div to expand to its content? - css

Question

although my questions has been answered lots of times before, but all the proposed solution I have tried and nothing seems to work.
what am trying to do is a big div that contains li tags; the li tags will also contain anchor tag, 2 divs and p tag.
to understand the big picture.. am trying to make a posting wall (activity-board), the wall will have posts looks like a bubble (div post) and the bubble will point (post-arrow) to a thumbnail image (a thumb3), to make the bubble style I made the post div absolute positioned with z-index less than the arrow-post.
and here is my css:
.activity-board {
background:#fff;
width:600px;
min-height:652px;
height:auto;
border:solid 2px #e7d28d;
border-radius: 6px;
-moz-border-radius: 6px;
-webkit-border-radius: 6px;
-webkit-box-shadow: inset 0px 0px 0px 3px rgba(255, 255, 255, 1);
box-shadow: inset 0px 0px 0px 3px rgba(255, 255, 255, 1);
float:left;
margin-left:20px;
}
.post-body{
position:relative;
display:block;
list-style-type:none;
width:600px;
height:auto;
background:#f9f9f9;
border-bottom:1px solid #CBCBCB;
border-radius:4px 4px 0 0;
-moz-border-radius:4px 4px 0 0;
-webkit-border-radius:4px 4px 0 0;
background: #fff;
float:left;
overflow:visible;
clear:both;
z-index:9;
}
.post{
position:absolute;
width:500px;
line-height:20px;
height:auto;
background:#FFF;
display:block;
margin-top:22.5px;
margin-left:77px;
text-align:left;
float:left;
z-index:1;
}
.post-arrow{
position:relative;
margin-top:32px;
margin-left:6px;
width:12px;
height:18px;
background:url(images/post-arrow.png);
float:left;
z-index:5;
}
.post p{ color:#025373; padding:8px; word-wrap:break-word; }
a.thumb-3 {
margin-top:18px;
display:block;
margin-left:18px;
width:46px;
height:46px;
border-radius: 5px;
-moz-border-radius: 5px;
-webkit-border-radius: 5px;
z-index:10;
float:left;
}
a.thumb-3 img{
padding:0;
margin:0 auto;
width:46px;
height:46px;
float:left;
border-radius:3px;
-moz-border-radius:3px;
-webkit-border-radius:3px;
}
here is my html:
<ul>
<li class="post-body">
<a class="thumb-3"><img src="images/Alsheikh Center (177).jpg" /></a>
<div class="post-arrow"></div>
<div class="post">
<p>
Hi there!
</p>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
http://jsfiddle.net/r9YpX/
Everything worked fine but the li tag does not expand to the content.. it only expands if I change the position of the post div to relative not absolute, which I cant change because it must be absolutely positioned under the arrow image to give it the bubble look.
any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.

Answer 1

ok Thanks guys i figuered it out.. I made position:relative and changed margin for post div and it worked! I thought I did this but perhaps I did something wrong that make it not work