Empty div height issues under IE - css

I want to implement a empty div with background color in it.
<html>
<head>
<style>
.dark_green {
background-color: #00D100;
width: 20px;
height: 4px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="dark_green"></div>
</body>
</html>
Under IE7/8/9 the height of this div is not 4px, it automatically change to 19px; Under FF and other chrome it is right.
Any suggestions?

It kind of depends on what you are trying to do. There are a few things that would work:
.dark_green {
[...]
line-height:4px;
}
or
.dark_green {
[...]
overflow:hidden;
}
Would both work.
The reason this is happening is because the text in your DIV (even if it's just whitespace) has a rendered line-height of 19px. The problem browsers are using that value instead of what you are setting as a fallback to not cut off text. Telling the browser that you want the text smaller (font-size:4px;), the line height smaller (line-height:4px;), or the text to get cut off (overflow:hidden;) should correct the issue.
The reasons I wouldn't use font-size in this context are:
It only works because the the line-height that is inherited when you
apply the new font size, so you might as well just set the correct
property.
Certain browsers have a minimum font size which is larger than 4px
(11px on FF, not sure if you can set this in IE), meaning that if
the user had a larger minimum set, your fix wouldn't work.

Add a doctype as the very first line such as <!DOCTYPE html>, to escape quirks mode. This is an important thing to do, or you'll have endless problems with IE.
Once you've done this, your original code will work in IE7 and greater just like it does in Firefox/Chrome.

I found this solution:
font-size: 4px;

add any item to the div you want to collapse, and set the display on that element to none.
if your problem div is
<div class="collapseToZero"></div>
Add something like this:
<span class="nothing"></span>
and add this style for the class
.nothing{display:none;}
and your resulting HTML will look like this
<div class="collapseToZero">
<span class="nothing"></span>
</div>
Now ie 7 will render your problem div with a height of zero instead of font size.

Another way - just to throw this into the mix: add an empty comment as the divs content. Yes its adding extra markup but it does work:
<div><!-- --></div>

Related

Why is there no float center in CSS?

I have found that there is no float center in CSS and I was a little disappointed. However, I can't help but ask myself why. While many people want to use this for centering content I wished to use it to float a bunch of blocks into rows on a dynamic page size. Unfortunately without a float center it looks sloppy as there is extra space (whatever fraction of a full block doesn't fit) on one side. It makes me sad that the intended use of floats is hurt by this property missing.
I can't see a reason why there isn't a float center and was wondering if anyone had reasons, either technical or otherwise why a float center was not included in the standard.
Instead of using float: left, use display: inline-block on the individual elements and center their container.
http://jsfiddle.net/ExplosionPIlls/rAkNY/5/
Yes, There is not Float center/middle and may the W3C having the answer.
There is <center> tag but no-longer.
The <center> tag is deprecated as of HTML 4, and using it creates a
few different issues. HTML centered elements can display differently
in different browsers, and using the tag can increase page
load time. Also, heavy use of will complicate your site
redesigns — removing hundreds of tags takes a lot longer than
changing one style rule in a stylesheet.
The tag was officially deprecated many, many years ago, but
it is still recognized by most browsers through their
backward-compatibility features. So yeah, if you something,
it'll be centered. However, in the interest of future-proofing you
should use modern CSS centering
methods instead.
Use margin:0 auto;
If you're centering something else, margin: 0 auto; will get your element centered most of the time. (Quick note: your element must have a declared width for this to work.)
The margin: 0 auto; rule is shorthand for 0 top and bottom margin, and
automatic left and right margins. Automatic left and right margins
work together to push the element into the center of its container.
there is no float center because floats take elements out of the content flow and position them as far left/right as possible. floats by themselves only move things sideways. not 100% on this last part, but i reckon it has something to do with print. i know the idea of floats was taken from the print industry.
If you want to center contents:
1. set css property display: inline-block or inline to each content item.
2. set css property text-align:center to their parent node.
It doesn't need to use CSS it needs only HTML. <center> tag will make it's child elements to center.
Demo:
div {
color: white;
padding: 5px;
}
#blueDiv {
background-color: dodgerblue;
}
#orangeDiv {
background-color: orange;
}
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Demo - Center elements</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="orangeDiv">this div is not centered</div>
<br>
<center>
<div id="blueDiv">this div is centered!</div>
</center>
</body>
</html>

vertically stacked divs have space between them (firefox)

a little css problem that i cannot quite find on SO - although I assume it has been asked before, apologies.
So, here is the html:
<html>
<body style="color:white">
<div class="a" style="width: 70%; background: blue;"><p>helloes helloes helloes</p></div>
<div class="b" style="width: 70%; background: pink;"><p>talk talk talk</p></div>
<div class="a" style="width: 70%; background: blue;"><p>yay! yay! yay!</p></div>
</body>
</html>
lovely.
If i open this in ff, i get three vertically stacked divs - but with space in between them! This is not what i wanted! Drama-rama!
ie renders this as i'd expect, which raises some alarm bells.
ie is 9, ff is 11
cheers,
andrew!
UPDATE a lot of mentioning the "p" tag - why/how is the p tag affecting anything? Isn't it wrapped by the div, and the div has the background color applied? Shouldn't, in fact, the div just be internally bigger, but with no space between adjacent divs?
UPDATE:
So i tried this html instead:
<html style="margin:0px; padding:0px;">
which didn't fix the issue, and also this:
<body style="color: white; margin:0px; padding:0px;">
which also didn't fix the issue - shouldn't the css be inherited by the "p" tag in both cases? Interestingly, i also examined the resultant css with firebug, and the p tags all have a margin and padding of 0...
ideas?
UPDATE: a lot of responses asking me to set padding to 0. This doesn't work. Any more answers stating that and i'll down vote 'em.
UPDATE: the question is really specific about using inline css. I don't actually care for inline css myself, but why is everybody providing css stylesheets for their answer?
UPDATE: somebody mentioned -webkit, and while i'm not using a google chrome at all, it is an interesting idea. I cannot see any ff related extra css that might be causing this problem, anybody have any ideas?
I tried it with Chrome and saw the same behavior. After looking at the underlying CSS (F12), Chrome is applying the following two lines to the <p> tag:
-webkit-margin-before: 1em;
-webkit-margin-after: 1em;
If I add the following to the css the blank lines go away:
-webkit-margin-before: 0px;
-webkit-margin-after: 0px;
Hope that helps!
Basically the P tags are by default taking margin. Add css
p{margin:0px; padding:0px;}
This is because of the auto-generated margin of a <p> element.
Firefox (and others) do this differently than IE.
You can "reset" this simply by doing a p{margin: 0} in your css.
You can do the same for all elements at once (which I recommend) by simply adding * { margin: 0; padding: 0;} in your css.
Small tip: Install a browser extension to inspect the behavior of your elements such as Firebug.
Your <p> tags have vertical margins. Vertical margins in CSS collapse, so that child margins can sometimes apply to parents. See http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/box.html#collapsing-margins
I resolved this be specifying a CSS 'line-height' I just set it to the same as the font size and then I got consistent DIV spacing across all browsers.

CSS Page-Break Not Working in all Browsers

I'm having trouble getting this working in most browsers, except for IE (it even works correctly in IE6) and Opera.
Firefox separates the divs correctly but only prints the first page.
Chrome and Safari only applies the page break to the last div.
How can I get this working across all browsers correctly?
The HTML:
<div id="leftNav">
<ul>
<!--links etc-->
</ul>
</div>
<div id="mainBody">
<div id="container">
<div class="pageBreak">
<!--content-->
</div>
<div class="pageBreak">
<!--content-->
</div>
<div class="pageBreak">
<!--content-->
</div>
</div>
</div>
The divs with the IDs #leftNav and #mainBody are are set to float:left, so they display nicely.
I only want to print the .pageBreak classes, hiding the #leftNav and the rest of the #mainBody with CSS.
The CSS:
#media print
{
#leftNav
{
display:none;
}
#mainBody
{
border:none;
margin:none;
padding:none;
}
}
Parent elements can not have float on them.
Setting float:none on all parent elements makes page-break-before:always work correctly.
Other things that can break page-break are:
using page-break inside tables
floating elements
inline-block elements
block elements with borders
For the sake of completion, and for the benefit of others who are having the same problem, I just want to add that I also had to add overflow: visible to the body tag in order for FireFox to obey the page breaks and even to print more than just the first page.
I've found that Twitter Bootstrap classes add a bunch of stuff to the page which has made it difficult to get page-breaks working. Firefox worked right away, but I've had to follow various suggestions to get it to work in Chrome and, finally, IE (11).
I followed the suggestions here and elsewhere. The only property I "discovered" that I haven't seen yet mentioned is "box-sizing". Bootstrap can set this property to "box-sizing: border-box", which broke IE. An IE-friendly setting is "box-sizing: content-box". I was led to this by the caveat about "block elements with borders" made by Richard Parnaby-King https://stackoverflow.com/a/5314590/3397752.
It looks like it's a bit of an arms race to discover the next property that might break page-breaks.
This is the setting that worked for me (Chrome, FF, IE 11). Basically, it tries to override all the problematic settings on all divs on the printed page. Of course, this might also break your formatting, and that would mean that you'll have to find another way to set up the page.
#media print {
div { float: none !important; position: static !important; display: inline;
box-sizing: content-box !important;
}
}
There is a solution if the parent has float . For the element to which you applied the page-break, make the element overflow:hidden. Thats all. It worked for me.
<div style='float:left'>
<p style='overflow:hidden;page-break-before:always;'></p>
</div>
Although this is not prominently documented, it should be noted that the page-break properties cannot be applied to table elements. If you have any elements that have a display: table; or display:table-cell; applied to them (common in many templates under the clearfix class) then contained elements will ignore the page-break rules. Just cancel out the the rule in your print stylesheet and you should be OK (after the floats have also been removed, of course).
Here is an example of how to do this for the popular clearfix problem.
.clearfix:before, .clearfix:after{
display: block!important;
}
The other place I have run into this is when the template declared the entire page (usually called main or main wrapper) with display:inline-block;
If the section is inside of an inline-block, it will not work so keep your eyes open for those as well. Changing or overwriting display:inline-block; with display:block should work.
I had a position: absolute; in the div printing that caused this not to work.
Make sure the parent element has display:block; rather than display: flex;. This helped me fix the issue
"Firefox versions up to and including 3.5 don’t support the avoid, left, or right values."
IE support is also partial
you can achieve what needed by :page-break-before:always; which is supported in all browsers
"but only print the first page" : I don't think it is css related , I suppose it's sth on print window of browser :)
what's your code?
like this?:
<style>
#media print
{
table {page-break-after:always}
}
#media print
{
table {page-break-before:always}
}
</style>

Stretch div width to match another

I have an html layout like the following:
<div id="header"></div>
<div id="body"></div>
<div id="footer"></div>
If the header is a fixed width, how can I force it to stretch to match the width of the body - for cases where the body is wider than the header.
First, encapsulate all your divs in a parent div. This sets a boundary to prevent certain divs from outgrowing others and makes the min-width hack a little easier to use.
<div id='container'>
<div id='header'></div>
<div id='body'></div>
<div id='footer'></div>
</div>
Then, in your CSS, use the following min-width hack to make the minimum width directive work across all browsers. The details of how it works are included in the comments. Note that when referring to IE, I mean IE 6-7, I believe IE 8 works like all other browsers.
#header {
min-width:800px; /*minimum width for non-ie browsers, ignored by ie*/
width: 100% !important; /*width will autoexpand as necassary in non-ie browsers*/
width: 800px; /*ie uses width as a min-width by default.*/
/*Also IE ignores !important and instead uses the last directive found*/
}
Now as the body div expands to a size greater than that of the header, the header will expand to match it.
I agree with Ian Elliott, I suspect you do not really need it. Maybe centering will do.
If you do need an instrument that allows header to match width with content that follows, table is that instrument. Table with three one cell rows will produce the layout you want, and it used to be a standard way to layout sites. Are you trying to match some old layout?

Why doesn't dynamically generated content change the height of containing div?

I am writing a footer div that displays info from the database. The footer has a different background color than the rest of the page, and will have a height that depends on how much content the database throws to it. When I generate the content with php and call for a border around the footer div, the content appears and is, let's say, 400px high, but the div border appears as a 1px high rectangle at the top of the div.
How do I get the height to auto-fit the content?
<div id="footer">
<?php
$an_array=array();
$tasks=mysql_query("select stuff from the db");
while($row=mysql_fetch_assoc($tasks)){
extract($taskrow);
$an_array[]=$task;
}
$an_array=array_chunk($an_array,4);
foreach($an_array as $dtkey=>$dtval){
echo "<dl>";
foreach($dtval as $dtvkey=>$dtvval){
echo "<dt>".$dtvval."</dt>";
}
echo "</dl>";
}
?>
</div>
This is what I get. The area below the red border should be filled with a color.
border image http://www.kevtrout.com/tortus/div.png
By popular demand, here is the css:
#footer{
border-top: 10px solid #d8d8d8;
background:#5b5b5b;
/*overflow:auto;*///Added this after seeing your answers, it worked
}
dl.tr{
width: 255px;
height:160px;
background: #5b5b5b;
margin:0px;
float:left;
padding: 10px;
}
dt.tr{
font-weight: normal;
font-size: 14px;
color: #d8d8d8;
line-height: 28px;
}
edit: I am using firefox on a mac
Check your footer CSS... if you have overflow set to anything but auto/scroll, then the DIV won't grow.
If not try using something other than DL/DT since DT's are inline elements, they won't push your div to fit content.*
e.g. just try using a DIV instead, if the footer grows, you have your answer.
(note: I revised order of suggestions)
*(I realize spec-wise, that this Shouldn't be an issue, but there wasn't an indication of which browsers this was occuring in, thus I would not be at all surprised if IE was rendering differently than expected for example)
Without seeing the CSS, my guess would be that your <dl>s are floated to get them side-by-side. The containing <div> then won't expand to contain them. If this is the case adding a clear:both; before the final </div> should fix it, like this:
<div style='clear:both;'></div>
The browser doesn't care if your content is generated by PHP or comes from a static HTML file.
The issue will most likely be in your CSS. Either the content you put in the footer has positioning properties (like float:left or position:absolute) that place them "outside" the div or the div has a fixed size and/or overflow properties set.
I'd suggest posting your CSS file here or (if it's too large) put it up somewhere where we can take a look. The finished HTML (you could just save a static copy of the output if your system isn't online yet) wouldn't hurt either.
By the way, your use of the <dl> element is wrong: you are missing the <dd> element. Items in the definition list always consist of one definition term and one or more definitions (which, in your code, are missing).
Also, rather than using <div style='clear:both;'></div> as suggested by Steve, I'd suggest explicitly stating the height of your <dt> elements. This way, the floats don't have to be cleared.

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