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

206
votes

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>
17
csshtmlborder
What do you want it to do if there is more content then can fit on the page? What browsers do you care about? - drs9222

17 Answers

117
votes

Your problem is not that the div is not at 100% height, but that the container around it is not.This will help in the browser I suspect you are using:

html,body { height:100%; }

You may need to adjust padding and margins as well, but this will get you 90% of the way there.If you need to make it work with all browsers you will have to mess around with it a bit.

This site has some excellent examples:

http://www.brunildo.org/test/html_body_0.html
http://www.brunildo.org/test/html_body_11b.html
http://www.brunildo.org/test/index.html

I also recommend going to http://quirksmode.org/

56
votes

I'll try to answer the question directly in the title, rather than being hell-bent on sticking a footer to the bottom of the page.

Make div extend to the bottom of the page if there's not enough content to fill the available vertical browser viewport:

Demo at (drag the frame handle to see effect) : http://jsfiddle.net/NN7ky
(upside: clean, simple. downside: requires flexbox - http://caniuse.com/flexbox)

HTML:

<body>

  <div class=div1>
    div1<br>
    div1<br>
    div1<br>
  </div>

  <div class=div2>
    div2<br>
    div2<br>
    div2<br>
  </div>

</body>

CSS:

* { padding: 0; margin: 0; }

html, body {
  height: 100%;

  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
}

body > * {
  flex-shrink: 0;
}

.div1 { background-color: yellow; }

.div2 {
  background-color: orange;
  flex-grow: 1;
}

ta-da - or i'm just too sleepy

18
votes

Try playing around with the following css rule:

#content {
    min-height: 600px;
    height: auto !important;
    height: 600px;
}

Change the height to suit your page. height is mentioned twice for cross browser compatibility.

7
votes

you can kinda hack it with the min-height declaration

<div style="min-height: 100%">stuff</div>
3
votes

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

3
votes

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>
3
votes

Try Ryan Fait's "Sticky Footer" solution,

http://ryanfait.com/sticky-footer/
http://ryanfait.com/resources/footer-stick-to-bottom-of-page/

Works across IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and supposedly Opera too, but haven't tested that. It's a great solution. Very easy and reliable to implement.

3
votes

Try:

html, body {
    height: 102%;
}
.wrapper {
    position: relative;
    height: 100%;
    width: 100%;
}
.div {
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    bottom: 0;
    width: 1000px;
    min-height: 100%;
}

Haven't tested it yet...

3
votes

Sticky footer with fixed height:

HTML scheme:

<body>
   <div id="wrap">
   </div>
   <div id="footer">
   </div>
</body>

CSS:

html, body {
    height: 100%;
}
#wrap {
    min-height: 100%;
    height: auto !important;
    height: 100%;
    margin: 0 auto -60px;
}
#footer {
    height: 60px;
}
2
votes

You can use the "vh" length unit for the min-height property of the element itself and its parents. It's supported since IE9:

<body class="full-height">
    <form id="form1">
    <div id="header">
        <a title="Home" href="index.html" />
    </div>

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

    <div id="content" class="full-height">
    </div>
</body>

CSS:

.full-height {
    min-height: 100vh;
    box-sizing: border-box;
}
2
votes

Try http://mystrd.at/modern-clean-css-sticky-footer/

The link above is down, but this link https://stackoverflow.com/a/18066619/1944643 is ok. :D

Demo:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="author" content="http://mystrd.at">
    <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">
    <title>James Dean CSS Sticky Footer</title>
    <style type="text/css">
        html {
            position: relative;
            min-height: 100%;
        }
        body {
            margin: 0 0 100px;
            /* bottom = footer height */
            padding: 25px;
        }
        footer {
            background-color: orange;
            position: absolute;
            left: 0;
            bottom: 0;
            height: 100px;
            width: 100%;
            overflow: hidden;
        }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <article>
        <!-- or <div class="container">, etc. -->
        <h1>James Dean CSS Sticky Footer</h1>

        <p>Blah blah blah blah</p>
        <p>More blah blah blah</p>
    </article>
    <footer>
        <h1>Footer Content</h1>
    </footer>
</body>

</html>
1
votes

I think the issue would be fixed just making the html fill 100% also, might be body fills the 100% of the html but html doesn't fill 100% of the screen.

Try with: 

html, body {
      height: 100%;
}
0
votes

Also you might like this: http://matthewjamestaylor.com/blog/ultimate-2-column-left-menu-pixels.htm

It isn't quite what you asked for, but it might also suit your needs.

0
votes

I dont have the code, but I know I did this once using a combination of height:1000px and margin-bottom: -1000px; Try that.

0
votes

Depending on how your layout works, you might get away with setting the background on the <html> element, which is always at least the height of the viewport.

0
votes

It is not possible to accomplish this using only stylesheets (CSS). Some browsers will not accept

height: 100%;

as a higher value than the viewpoint of the browser window.

Javascript is the easiest cross browser solution, though as mentioned, not a clean or beautiful one.

-2
votes

I know this is not the best method, but I couldnt figure it out without messing my header, menu, etc positions. So.... I used a table for those two colums. It was a QUICK fix. No JS needed ;)