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members here at Webmaster World have asked if there was a method to
assign 100% height to <div>'s used as left and/or right
navigation menus. In some cases, members also wished to assign
background-images to their div's that would always display at 100% of
the resized browser window. Most
attempts to accomplish this were made by assigning the property and
value: div{height:100%} - this alone will not work. The reason is that
without a parent defined height, the div{height:100%;} has nothing to
factor 100% percent of, and will default to a value of
div{height:auto;} - auto is an "as needed value" which is governed by
the actual content, so that the div{height:100%} will a=only extend as
far as the content demands. The
solution to the problem is found by assigning a height value to the
parent container, in this case, the body element. Writing your body
stlye to include height 100% supplies the needed value. body {
margin:0;
padding:0;
height:100%;
} Now
when height:100%; is applied to divs (or other elements) contained
withing the body, the height percentage has a containing (body) value
to work with. The
following example is a three column, liquid layout with 100% height
assigned to both flanking divs. Background images can be assigned to
these divs and will render at 100% of the window height. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" >
<head>
<title>One Hundred Percent Height Divs</title>
<style type="text/css" media="screen">
body {
margin:0;
padding:0;
height:100%; /* this is the key! */
}
#left {
position:absolute;
left:0;
top:0;
padding:0;
width:200px;
height:100%; /* works only if parent container is assigned a height value */
color:#333;
background:#eaeaea;
border:1px solid #333;
}
.content {
margin-left:220px;
margin-right:220px;
margin-bottom:20px;
color:#333;
background:#ffc;
border:1px solid #333;
padding:0 10px;
}
#right {
position:absolute;
right:0;
top:0;
padding:0;
width:200px;
height:100%; /* works only if parent container is assigned a height value */
color:#333;
background:#eaeaea;
border:1px solid #333;
} #left p {
padding:0 10px;
}
#right p {
padding:0 10px;
}
p.top {
margin-top:20px;
}
</style>
</head> <body>
<div id="left">
<p class="top">This design uses a defined body height of 100% which allows setting the
contained left and right divs at 100% height.</p> <p>This design uses a defined body height of 100% which allows setting the contained left and
right divs at 100% height.</p> <p>This design uses a defined body height of 100% which allows setting the contained left and
right divs at 100% height.</p>
</div> <div class="content">
<p>This design uses a defined body height which of 100% allows setting the contained left and
right divs at 100% height.</p>
</div> <div class="content">
<p>This design uses a defined body height which of 100% allows setting the contained left and
right divs at 100% height.</p>
</div> <div class="content">
<p>This design uses a defined body height which of 100% allows setting the contained left and
right divs at 100% height.</p>
</div> <div id="right">
<p class="top">To solve an inheritance issue displayed in div #right as rendered in Opera, class p.top
using margin-top:20; is applied to the first paragraph of each outer divs.</p> <p>This design uses a defined body height which of 100% allows setting the contained left and
right divs at 100% height.</p> <p>This design uses a defined body height which of 100% allows setting the contained left and
right divs at 100% height.</p>
</div>
</body>
</html> Tiling backgrounds may also be deployed: #right {
position:absolute;
right:0;
top:0;
padding:0;
width:200px;
height:100%; /* works only parent container is assigned a height value */
color:#333;
background:url(images/mytile.gif) repeat;
border:1px solid #333;
} The
above three column layout will not display properly in Netscape 4.x
because of the position:absolute; right:0; styles of the div #right. A
three column liquid layout was used for demonstration purposes, the
100% height can be applied as required. Remember to protect Netscape 4 from styles it cannot understand by using the @import rule. The above has been tested in Opera6, IE6, and Mozilla 1.1 - it should work in most modern browsers. Have fun! XHTML + CSS + WebStandards = FREEDOM! - papabaer ;)
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