Is there a way to set a minimum height for a div, but still allow it to be expandable?
For example, I want a div to have an exact height of 300px when my page loads. However, if more content is added to the div with javascript, I want it to expand after that.
If I specify a height and the content expands past the div, it either clips or adds scrollbars, depending on the value of overflow.
If I don't specify a height, it only expands as far as the content.
Thanks
Here's the solution I used to fix this on ie6, courtesy of Dustin Diaz
selector {
min-height: 300px;
height: auto !important;
height: 300px;
}
The CSS property min-height does exactly this. Note that it does not work properly in IE6, however IE6 treats the height property as min-height, so you can use IE conditional comments to set a height property in a style sheet that is only loaded by IE6.
Related
I know that min-height: 100% will only work to take up a minimum of 100% of its parent element's height if the parent element has some numeric value for height, but what if I have a few nested divs and I want them all to have a min-height of 100%? I tried min-height:inherit but that didn't work either? I know I can probably solve this problem with JavaScript by simply checking the browser height value on document load and then assigning that to the min-height property of my nested divs, but I'd like to know if it would be possible to solve this with just css?
Edit: I should also mention that I need my outer most div and my nested divs all to have a min-height of 100% such that they take up at least the height of the browser, but expand if needed.
min-height: inherit; should work: http://jsfiddle.net/ugxbs/
EDIT
As for percentage values and the expected behavior, there is no logic behind nested min-height. What you should do is to use the height property for all parents, then add min-height to the inner most DIV.
F.ex:
<html>
<body>
<div class="outer">
<div class="inner"></div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
CSS:
html, body, .outer { height: 100% }
.inner { min-height: 100%; }
http://jsfiddle.net/4PsdT/
This way, you are telling the browser to set all outer elements from the top (HTML) to a height of 100%. This will make these elements stretch across the browser height. Then just add a min-height to the inner most element that contains the content.
Setting a height doesn’t mean that it’s children’s excessive content will fall out, unless you add overflow:hidden;.
I can make it work with the property height but not min-height.
http://jsfiddle.net/zDVqm/
I'm struggling with a client project. All of my divs have no absolute positioning, height:100% for html, body, and container divs, and yet the static-content stops short of its contents (at 910px).
I can change the overflow property to auto, and the background will continue down to the end of the content, but it adds a scroll bar, and the bottom border of the static-content div stays in the same place (at 910px).
UPDATE: Development link was no longer valid, so I removed it. Suffice to say that Animuson's thorough explanation is the valuable part of this thread, and solved the problem of containers not expanding to match their content. – Ty
You used the wrong overflow-y property for clearing, and you should set a min-height instead of a regular height. Try this:
#static-content {
background-color: #FFFFFF;
margin: 0 auto;
min-height: 100%; /* Set to minimum height so overflow doesn't get hidden */
overflow-y: hidden; /* HIDE overflow; I know, it doesn't make much sense */
position: relative;
width: 960px;
}
Floating Content by Itself
Given this green box which has a padding of 20px (for visibility), notice how a single red box floated to the left will expand past the boundary of its parent box. This is because floating content doesn't actually take up any "space" in the visual area. All other elements will expand underneath it, and only text will wrap around it.
Clearing Floated Content in the Parent
In order to counter this and make the green box completely encompass the area of its child red box, we can add overflow: hidden to its styles. This will expand the box down far enough.
Expanding the Parent to 100% Height
You might think that just adding height: 100% is the simplest way to make it expand to where it needs to be.However, the height property specifies an absolute height. Since the content which is floated does not actually take up any vertical space, our overflow: hidden property will cut off all the content that goes past the parent's height.
Using a Minimum Height Instead
Since we want it to expand to at least a 100% height, we can use the min-height property to force it there and still maintain the "automatic" height needed to make the parent green box fully encompass the child red box, letting it push past the 100% only when it needs too.
How You Were Set Up
All elements, by default, are set to overflow: visible so that property didn't really change anything. The only difference you had between this and the first example I provided was that you had a height: 100% set on the element. So the parent was expanding to 100% height but still not encompassing the full height of its child red box.
If you have to use overflow:visible for some reason, there's other way to force container to stretch to contain all floated content. You have to put element with clear:both as a last container's elements. If you ignore ancient IEs (<8) you can do it with very simple css (vide https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/clear-fix/):
.your-container:after {
content: "";
display: table;
clear: both;
}
If height: 100% doesn't work well for you, you can try this calc function from CSS3:
/* Firefox */
height: -moz-calc(100%);
/* WebKit */
height: -webkit-calc(100%);
/* Standard */
height: calc(100%);
You can try this either with height, or with min-height, as already said. You can with this calc functions also other calculations like:
height: -moz-calc(100% - 50px);
And this is sometimes very useful, as you might guess.
height:100% is the height of the content that flows with your container at hand and is not taking into account your floated content, so that is why the height of your container is stopping short. Remove it and clear your container properly to clear your floated elements within and it will work:
#static-content:before, #static-content:aftr {
display:table;
content:"";
}
#static-content:after {
clear:both;
}
#static-content {
zoom:1; /*ie fix*/
}
You have a float in static-maincontent, which removes it from the regular flow of the content of the document, and hence static-content doesn't care about its height any more, and so won't expand to cover it.
Additionally, remove height:100% for static-content.
READ FOR ANSWER!!!-- Okay so I had the same problem, All that was needed was to remove the "Positioning" Style. Should work perfectly fine.
I've got a container that's set to a max-width:780px and height is undeclared. Inside the container, there's an image slideshow. Everything on the page is responsive, so as the width decreases, the image (who's width is set to 100%) adjust's the heights container.
The slideshow change's the images to display:static; and position:absolute; which no longer "holds open" the container because it's not seen as content of the container
Is there any creative solution out there to take the height of a child element that's absolutely positioned?
Example below has NO height declared on the main container.. nothing's holding it open.
http://dhut.ch/test/santos/
Thank you!
Are the images all the same dimensions? If yes, you can use a percentage padding-top on the element that contains the images.
So if your images are all, say, 760px wide by 500px tall, that's 500/760 = .65789
Which as percentage would translate into something like:
#main {
position: relative;
max-width: 760px;
padding-top: 65.789%;
}
The reason this works is because with padding if it's set with a percentage, it is calculated as a percentage of the width. As the element shrinks in width, the height will shrink proportionately and the box will remain in the same ratio of width to height. The images, positioned absolutely, won't be adding to the height of the box.
This'll work as long as your images are all the same aspect ratio and you're not expecting that ratio to change. If you'll be using a lot of random images, this isn't for you.
I recently had a similar problem with an image that I needed to absolute position at the top of a Zurb Foundation templated page in order to pull it out of the flow and reset its dimensions (Image had to stretch to edges of wrapper, instead be enclosed by its parent .row padding). However, of course, this meant that all the fluid responsive elements below it popped right up over the top of the image. Setting a margin-top or positioning the sibling elements below meant a rigid top space that didn't resize with the width of the browser.
To get around it, I placed a duplicate of the image right after the absolute positioned image and set its visibility: hidden; I had to add a little bit of extra margin bottom to make up for the difference in height, but the end result is everything on the page flowing exactly to the height of the image in use.
I've also used the padding trick described by unexplainedBacn above, and it's a great trick as well. It takes a little bit of math, but I voted that answer up. Great solution.
I think you'd better change your approach. For sliders, the best practices is to float child elements of the container, and also use one of the known techniques to prevent parent's great collapse. So, I suggest that you remove the position: absolute CSS rule from images and float them inside your <div id='main'>, then use any of these methods to force it to encompass it's children:
div#main {overflow: hidden;}
div#main:after {content: ''; display: block; clear: both; visibility: hidden;}
Add a <div style='clear: both;'> to the end of your main div container.
Remove the absolute position. I would avoid inline styling as well.
i have a div on a web page that basically acts as a panel container. i want it to:
have a minimum width of 1000px; So no matter how small the content inside the div is, it will at least keep the panel to 1000px in width:
in terms of max width, it should keep going as big as the content within it. So if a person has a 24 inch monitor and they want to maximize the browser it should keep growing until the content inside doesn't have any scroll bars and then stop.
needs to work in all browsers.
how would i do this in css?
Assuming this item is a block element (i.e. "display: block"), it should scale automatically as wide as its containing element (in this case the browser window).
In CSS, just specify "min-width: 1000px." This will work in IE8+ and all modern browsers.
try this
#panel {
min-width: 1000px;
diplay: block;
overflow: hidden; }
Try this:
#panel
{
/* Other styles */
min-width:1000px;
/*width:100%; - removed as it will create horizontal scrollbar if margin and padding aren't 0 as per Josh's comment.*/
}
However, you will problems with older browsers like IE6 which do not like the min-width thingy in which case you will need to use JavaScript.
On a customer website, I have to add a background image for only a contained region of the page (its real content part).
The problem is, if the content is short enough, then the image will be clipped. How would be possible to have the image completely visible? I have tried to add the "overflow" CSS attribute but unfortunately it did not help me.
Here is an example of the website I have to work on: http://www.sfp-pensioen.nl/werknemer/welkom The background image is on the div element with id="content".
On the specific link that I am sending it is not an issue because the content is long enough, but if you remove elements using firebug then the problem will become obvious.
ps: IE6 must be supported.
Following on from Graham's answer:
"height" in ie6 acts like "min-height" across other browsers.
min-height: 50px;
_height: 50px;
The example above will provide a cross browser minimum height of 50px. ie6 will read "_height" where other browsers will not. If you don't hacks, use a conditional statement.
Rich
you could either give a height to the id #content
or
apply the background:url("/images/Doelgroep-Background-Image.jpg") no-repeat scroll left top transparent; to #mainContent instead of #content
overflow for background-images is impossible, but you could set a min-height for content (or set the image in another div with lower z-index and position it abolutely to appear at the place you want - but thats a very bad solution)
The overflow attribute controls what happens to the div when the content is too big to fit - if you have a fixed-size div with some content that might overflow, you generally want the auto option. overflow has no effect on a background image.
For your case, it sounds like you want to specify a min-height on the content div. Note that this isn't supported by older browsers like IE6, which you may or may not care about. There are plenty of ways to work around this, though.
What you want is the 100% height you can achieve this with the following.
html {
height: 100%;
}
body {
height: 100%;
}
#content {
height: 100%;
}
You need the min-height and the body needs a height so every child element of the body will follow the rule.
Also by adding min-height: 100%; to all css rules will solve all your problems for any grade A browser.
If you know the #sidebar or #main will always have a visual height the same or larger than the background image then you can simply add the background image to:
.sub #wrapper #mainContent {
background:url("/images/Doelgroep-Background-Image.jpg") no-repeat scroll 0 150px transparent;
}
instead of where it is an the moment on #content