Question

Keep two DIV's the same height

Asked by: AielloJ

I have two columns on my web page with each column inside a DIV tag.  Each column has variable length text.  The background colors of each column is only as tall as the information it is displaying.  The background height needs to be as tall as the tallest of the two.  Is there a way using CSS to force the height of both columns to the height of the tallest of the two columns?

<div id="Column1">
// variable amount of display info.
</div>
 
<div id="Column2">
// variable amount of display info.
</div>

Do I have to use a table for this, or can CSS handle it?

Thank you in advance.

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Asked On
2009-01-29 at 04:55:55ID24094333
Tags

CSS HTML

Topics

Web Languages/Standards

,

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

,

Web Development Software

Participating Experts
5
Points
500
Comments
12

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Answers

 

by: glumlunPosted on 2009-01-29 at 05:05:01ID: 23496723

hi
the best way to do this and not resort to tables is with faux columns
this site explains it better than i could:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fauxcolumns/

 

by: ChorchPosted on 2009-01-29 at 05:06:25ID: 23496734

Hello,

this can be done with javascript.

I use it every other day:

http://www.killersites.com/blog/2006/matching-div-heigths/

Regards

 

by: carl_tawnPosted on 2009-01-29 at 05:09:40ID: 23496757

The easiest way is to wrap the two divs in a container and set their heights to 100%:


<html>
<body>
  <div style="height:500px; border:solid 1px red;">
    <div style="background-color:red;border:solid 1px blue;float:left; height:100%;">Some text</div>
    <div style="background-color:green;border:solid 1px blue;height:100%;">A lot more text A lot more text A lot more text A lot 
       more text A lot more text A lot more text A lot more text A lot more text A lot more text A lot more text A lot more text A 
       lot more text A lot more text A lot more text A lot more text A lot more text A lot more text A lot more text A lot more text 
       A lot more text A lot more text A lot more text
    </div>
  </div>
</body>
</html>

                                              
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by: myderrickPosted on 2009-01-29 at 05:12:35ID: 23496779

I think that using the faux-column approach is good.

www.alistapart.com/articles/fauxcolumns/

Good luck.

 

by: myderrickPosted on 2009-01-29 at 05:14:04ID: 23496798

Sorry...didn't notice glumlun's comment...

MD

 

by: AielloJPosted on 2009-01-29 at 05:19:55ID: 23496848

Thanks to all for the quick responses.  I'll be looking them over later today.

AielloJ

 

by: myderrickPosted on 2009-01-29 at 05:31:04ID: 23496947

If you want you can try the image-free technique below.

http://matthewjamestaylor.com/blog/equal-height-columns-cross-browser-css-no-hacks

Good luck

MD

 

by: AielloJPosted on 2009-01-29 at 05:53:01ID: 23497164

Is there a way to use the containing DIV sugested by carl_tawn that will expand or possibly contract to whatever is necessary?  What if the content one some pages are bigger than 500px?  Would like to avoid hard coding for the largest page height if necessary.

  <div style="height:500px; border:solid 1px red;">

Thank you in advance for your help.

 

by: carl_tawnPosted on 2009-01-29 at 05:54:22ID: 23497183

You don't necessarily need to force the 500px, i just put that in for demonstration purposes. You can replace this with a percentage value or whatever, just remember that percentages will be relative to the parent container.

 

by: AielloJPosted on 2009-01-29 at 05:55:26ID: 23497189

Sorry, browser wasn't refreshed.  Didn't see myderrik's post.  Will look at.

 

by: yessirnosirPosted on 2009-01-29 at 09:25:57ID: 23499994

Stu Nichols has a good technique using wide colored borders on one div to provide the background color of the adjacent div(s).  Example here (in 3 column form, but easily converted to 2 column):
http://www.cssplay.co.uk/layouts/3cols2.html#   I've replaced several faux-column layouts with that setup.  You can make the center column fluid-width if desired.

...that matthewjamestaylor technique is brilliant... but with all the nested containers it reminds me a lot of the nested-table mess that CSS was supposed to save us from!!!  

 

by: AielloJPosted on 2009-01-31 at 06:19:01ID: 31540414

The percentages of percentages took a little getting used to but the solution is easy to implement and flexible.  Thanks!

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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