How to fill 100% of remaining height?

Question

+--------------------+
|                    |
|                    |
|                    |
|                    |
|         1          |
|                    |
|                    |
|                    |
|                    |
+--------------------+
|                    |
|                    |
|                    |
|                    |
|         2          |
|                    |
|                    |
|                    |
|                    |
+--------------------+

Contents of (1) as shown above are unknown, as it may increase or decrease in dynamically generated pages. The second div (2) as shown above, should fill the remaining space.

here is an example of my html

<div id="full">
<!--contents of 1 -->
<div id="someid">
<!--contents of 2 -->
</div>
</div>

css...

#full{width: 300px; background-color: red;}
#someid{height: 100%;}

Or is this method wrong? How should I do this? please see my demo and show me my mistake.

Pot

Do you want the height of 1 + 2 to be the exact height of the viewport? Or 2 is the same size as the viewport and it scrolls down equal to the height of 1? – Soleure

height of 1 I don't know, and remaining of 1 then 2 be full height. – Pot

@C-Link What do you mean by height:100% ? Do you mean the div should occupy the remaining height? – Roncesvalles

@Roncesvalles yes! remaining height. – Pot

@C-Link remaining height of the page or the remaining scrollheight inside the page? – Roncesvalles

@Roncesvalles It would be ok in both condition. – Pot

@C-Link I can't help you but just update your question so that others can help you. From next time please explain your post clearly.. :) – Roncesvalles

Answer 1

You should be able to do this if you add in a div (#header below) to wrap your contents of 1.

1. If you float #header, the content from #someid will be forced to flow around it.

2. Next, you set #header's width to 100%. This will make it expand to fill the width of the containing div, #full. This will effectively push all of #someid's content below #header since there is no room to flow around the sides anymore.

3. Finally, set #someid's height to 100%, this will make it the same height as #full.

JSFiddle

HTML

<div id="full">
    <div id="header">Contents of 1</div>
    <div id="someid">Contents of 2</div>
</div>

CSS

html, body, #full, #someid {
  height: 100%;
}

#header {
  float: left;
  width: 100%;
}

---

Update

I think it's worth mentioning that flexbox is well supported across modern browsers today. The CSS could be altered have #full become a flex container, and #someid should set it's flex grow to a value greater than 0.

html, body, #full {
  height: 100%;
}

#full {
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
}

#someid {
  flex-grow: 1;
}

Soleure

please se my **demo and rectify it where is mistake. – Pot

I think you are right but my problem couldn't be solved but anyway this helped me to understand about this. So I'm accepting your answer. – Pot

Your answer works beautifully, but I am slightly confused as to why it works: If you play with the background colors, you can see that #someid is ALWAY equal to the height of #full, despite the height of #header. Logically, the content of #someid should start at the top of #full. Why does #header push the content down? – Hubbard

Well, it works beautifully until you try giving a child of #someid a height of 100%. – Hubbard

The problem with this is it makes #someid the same height as #full, so #someid overflows #full by the height of #header. It doesn't set #someid to 100% of the remaining space. If you set overflow: scroll; on #someid you would see the problem. – Chart

Yeah, this answer should be updated. It was a hack that abused the fact that float pushed content down, which was a "good enough" at the time when dealing with browsers that didn't support things like calc and flexbox layouts weren't widely supported. Look how far we've come in less than 3 years! – Soleure

It's an hack, but does not solve the problem, the bottom div's height is 100% screen height and it overflows. Not the ideal solution for the problem at hand and very misleading. – Bushcraft

JS will do it... nice alternative though.... but just in case if we have to do set any child element height based on the parent div (the second div, which is pushed to the bottom) it'll cause problems, didn't see the update though... flex is a good solution but with very less fallback.., Have to do some heavy lifting through JS – Bushcraft

@Olof_t The flexbox solution shown here does work in IE11. – Chaney

The flexbox solution here works only on IE11, all other browsers provide a scroll. – Sneaker

The flex solution works in 2023.. – Valenzuela

Answer 2

To get a div to 100% height on a page, you will need to set each object on the hierarchy above the div to 100% as well. for instance:

html { height:100%; }
body { height:100%; }
#full { height: 100%; }
#someid { height: 100%; }

Although I cannot fully understand your question, I'm assuming this is what you mean.

This is the example I am working from:

<html style="height:100%">
    <body style="height:100%">
        <div style="height:100%; width: 300px;">
            <div style="height:100%; background:blue;">

            </div>
        </div>
    </body>
</html>

Style is just a replacement for the CSS which I haven't externalised.

Servant

which element do you want to be 100% height? and in relation to what? – Servant

(2) should be 100% in height. Your method may work in without wrapper but I'm using a wrapper. – Pot

if you want someid to also be 100% then you have to add 100% to it, and set the container to 100% too. I've edited my question to show this. – Servant

I already said it may not work coz I use a wrapper and then setting it to 100% also don't work. – Pot

Try the example I posted, You might just be missing some thing along the hierarchy which is screwing it up. – Servant

Ok! I'm sure now you are right but din't find what happened please check this and rectify. Demo – Pot

Answer 3

    html,
    body {
        height: 100%;
    }

    .parent {
        display: flex;
        flex-flow:column;
        height: 100%;
        background: white;
    }

    .child-top {
        flex: 0 1 auto;
        background: pink;
    }

    .child-bottom {
        flex: 1 1 auto;
        background: green;
    }

    <div class="parent">
        <div class="child-top">
          This child has just a bit of content
        </div>
        <div class="child-bottom">
          And this one fills the rest
        </div>
    </div>

Supertax

Could you please elaborate a bit on this code-only answer? Thanks! – Vide

Hello @arkascha, I've just updated my post with a working code example. Thanks for the suggestion. Cheers. – Supertax

If you put this into a React code sandbox, this doesn't work – Satyriasis

@Satyriasis for react, you have to add the height: 100% for the root div too – Lough

Answer 4

This can be done with tables:

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" height="100%">
    <tr height="0%"><td>
        <div id="full">
            <!--contents of 1 -->
        </div>
    </td></tr>
    <tr><td>
        <div id="someid">
            <!--contents of 2 -->
        </div>
    </td></tr>
</table>

Then apply css to make someid fill the remaining space:

#someid {
    height: 100%;
}

Now, I can just hear the angry shouts from the crowd, "Oh noes, he's using tables! Feed him to the lions!" Please hear me out.

Unlike the accepted answer which accomplishes nothing aside from making the container div the full height of the page, this solution makes div #2 fill the remaining space as requested in the question. If you need that second div to fill the full height allotted to it, this is currently the only way to do it.

But feel free to prove me wrong, of course! CSS is always better.

Jesselton

Answer 5

I know this is a late entry but even in 2016 I am surprised by the complete lack of IE support for flex (currently 11 is the only one to support it and its majorly buggy at that http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox) which from a business perspective is not great! So I think until IE is shut down the best solution and most cross-browser friendly one surely must be a JS/Jquery one?

Most sites already use Jquery and a very simple example (for my code) is:

$('#auto_height_item').height($(window).height() - $('#header').height());

You can obviously replace window and header and let the basic math do the work. Personally I'm still not convinced about flex yet...

Horrorstruck

Answer 6

I know this is an old question, but nowadays there is a super easy form to do that, which is CCS Grid, so let me put the divs as example:

<div id="full">
  <div id="header">Contents of 1</div>
  <div id="someid">Contents of 2</div>
</div>

then the CSS code:

.full{
  width:/*the width you need*/;
  height:/*the height you need*/;
  display:grid;
  grid-template-rows: minmax(100px,auto) 1fr;
 }

And that's it, the second row, scilicet, the someide, will take the rest of the height because of the property 1fr, and the first div will have a min of 100px and a max of whatever it requires.

I must say CSS has advanced a lot to make easier programmers lives.

Emden

Answer 7

I added this for pages that were too short.

html:

<section id="secondary-foot"></section>

css:

section#secondary-foot {
    height: 100%;
    background-color: #000000;
    position: fixed;
    width: 100%;
}

Hephzibah

I tried this in @BhojendraNepal's JSFiddle, but couldn't get it to work. Could you show in you own JSFiddle or describe where you added your element? – Sanskritic

Answer 8

Create a div, which contains both divs (full and someid) and set the height of that div to the following:

height: 100vh;

The height of the containing divs (full and someid) should be set to "auto". That's all.

Disillusionize