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How do I force a DIV block to extend to the bottom of a page even if it has no content?

Asked 2008-09-29T04:40:24.290
226

In the markup shown below, I'm trying to get the content div to stretch all the way to the bottom of the page but it's only stretching if there's content to display. The reason I want to do this is so the vertical border still appears down the page even if there isn't any content to display.

Here is my DEMO:

body {
    font-family: Trebuchet MS, Verdana, MS Sans Serif;
    font-size:0.9em;
    margin:0;
    padding:0;
}
div#header {
    width: 100%;
    height: 100px;
}
#header a {
    background-position: 100px 30px;
    background: transparent url(site-style-images/sitelogo.jpg) no-repeat fixed 100px 30px;
    height: 80px;
    display: block;
}
#header, #menuwrapper {
    background-repeat: repeat;
    background-image: url(site-style-images/darkblue_background_color.jpg);
}
#menu #menuwrapper {
    height:25px;
}
div#menuwrapper {
    width:100%
}
#menu, #content {
    width:1024px;
    margin: 0 auto;
}
div#menu {
    height: 25px;
    background-color:#50657a;
}
<form id="form1">
  <div id="header">
      <a title="Home" href="index.html" />
  </div>

  <div id="menuwrapper">
      <div id="menu">
      </div>
  </div>

  <div id="content">
  </div>
</form>

css html border
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3 Answers

9

you can kinda hack it with the min-height declaration

<div style="min-height: 100%">stuff</div>
answered 2008-09-29T04:44:24.047
4

While it isn't as elegant as pure CSS, a small bit of javascript can help accomplish this:

<html>
<head>
<style type='text/css'>
    div {
        border: 1px solid #000000;
    } 
</style>
<script type='text/javascript'>

    function expandToWindow(element) {
         var margin = 10; 

         if (element.style.height < window.innerHeight) { 
            element.style.height = window.innerHeight - (2 * margin) 
         }
    }


</script>
</head>
<body onload='expandToWindow(document.getElementById("content"));'>
<div id='content'>Hello World</div>
</body>
</html>
answered 2008-09-30T03:39:18.517
3

The min-height property is not supported by all browsers. If you need your #content to extend it's height on longer pages the height property will cut it short.

It's a bit of a hack but you could add an empty div with a width of 1px and height of e.g. 1000px inside your #content div. That will force the content to be at least 1000px high and still allow longer content to extend the height when needed

answered 2008-09-29T07:00:54.797

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