Question

I have a page that has a header, content, and footer. The header and footer are of fixed height, and I’d like the content to adjust its height so that it fits dynamically between the header and footer. I am planning to put a background-image in my content, so it is critical that it actually fills the rest of the unoccupied vertical space.

I used the Sticky Footer approach to ensure that the footer remains on the bottom of the page. This however does not make the content span the entire height of the remaining space.

I have tried several solutions which involved me adding height:100%, height:auto; position:relative but it did not work.

html,
body {
  height: 100%;
  background-color: yellow;
}
header {
  width: 100%;
  height: 150px;
  background-color: blue;
}
header nav ul li {
  display: inline;
  padding: 0 30px 0 0;
  float: left;
}
#wrapper {
  min-height: 100%;
  height: auto !important;
  height: 100%;
  margin: 0 0 -30px 0;
  /* the bottom margin is the negative value of the footer's height */
  position: relative;
}
#wrapper #content {
  background-color: pink;
  width: 400px;
  height: 100%;
  margin: 0 0 -30px 100px;
  padding: 25px 30px 25px 30px;
}
footer {
  margin: -30px 0 0 0;
  width: 100%;
  height: 30px;
  background-color: green;
}

<div id="wrapper">

  <header>
    <div id="logo"></div>

    <nav>
      <ul>
        <li>About</li>
        <li>Menu</li>
        <li>Specials</li>
      </ul>
    </nav>
  </header>

  <div id="content">
    content
    <br>goes
    <br>here
  </div>

</div>

<footer>footer</footer>

Answer 1

Try changing your css to this:

html,
body {
  height: 100%;
  background-color: yellow;
}
header {
  width: 100%;
  height: 150px;
  background-color: blue;
}
header nav ul li {
  display: inline;
  padding: 0 30px 0 0;
  float: left;
}
#wrapper {
  min-height: 100%;
  height: auto !important;
  height: 100%;
  margin: 0 0 -30px 0;
  /* the bottom margin is the negative value of the footer's height */
  position: relative;
}
#content {
  background-color: pink;
  width: 400px;
  padding: 25px 30px 25px 30px;
  position: absolute;
  bottom: 30px;
  top: 150px;
  margin-left: 100px;
}
footer {
  margin: -30px 0 0 0;
  width: 100%;
  height: 30px;
  background-color: green;
}

<div id="wrapper">

  <header>
    <div id="logo"></div>

    <nav>
      <ul>
        <li>About</li>
        <li>Menu</li>
        <li>Specials</li>
      </ul>
    </nav>
  </header>

  <div id="content">
    content
    <br>goes
    <br>here
  </div>

</div>

<footer>footer</footer>

You probably don’t want to be setting the width, padding, margins, ect. of the wrapper. Also, with absolute positioning you can pull the bottom and top of the content to where you want them.

Here’s what you are after, I think.