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Asked: 2026-05-13T06:06:44+00:00

I have a website I’m working on that I should have perfected the layout

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I have a website I’m working on that I should have perfected the layout on FIRST. But I am now faced with the issue of the columns not going all the way to the bottom. I have read the tutorials on how to get the 3 column layout in CSS from another person http://www.ejeliot.com/blog/61

The problem is I’m still lost. Can anyone look at this simple template (www.centuryautosd.com/help.asp )and make the CSS so that the columns go all the way down regardless of how tall this page gets? The data is generated dynamically so the height requirements will constantly change with each page that is viewed.
Here is the link to the real page: http://www.centuryautosd.com/help.asp

thanks!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Here you go:

    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<style type="text/css"> 
<!-- 
body  {
    font: 100% Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    background: #666666;
    margin: 0; /* it's good practice to zero the margin and padding of the body element to account for differing browser defaults */
    padding: 0;
    text-align: center; /* this centers the container in IE 5
 browsers. The text is then set to the left aligned default in the #container selector */
    color: #000000;
}
.thrColFixHdr #container { 
    width: 780px;  /* using 20px less than a full 800px width allows for browser chrome and avoids a horizontal scroll bar */
    background: #FFFFFF;
    margin: 0 auto; /* the auto margins (in conjunction with a width) center the page */
    border: 1px solid #000000;
    text-align: left; /* this overrides the text-align: center on the body element. */
} 
.thrColFixHdr #header { 
    background: #DDDDDD; 
    padding: 0 10px 0 20px;  /* this padding matches the left alignment of the elements in the divs that appear beneath it. If an image is used in the #header instead of text, you may want to remove the padding. */
} 

#contentContainer
{
    overflow: hidden;
}

.thrColFixHdr #header h1 {
    margin: 0; /* zeroing the margin of the last element in the #header div will avoid margin collapse - an unexplainable space between divs. If the div has a border around it, this is not necessary as that also avoids the margin collapse */
    padding: 10px 0; /* using padding instead of margin will allow you to keep the element away from the edges of the div */
}
.thrColFixHdr #sidebar1 {
    float: left; /* since this element is floated, a width must be given */
    width: 150px; /* the actual width of this div, in standards-compliant browsers, or standards mode in Internet Explorer will include the padding and border in addition to the width */
    background: #EBEBEB; /* the background color will be displayed for the length of the content in the column, but no further */
    padding: 15px 10px 15px 20px; /* padding keeps the content of the div away from the edges */
    margin-bottom: -2000px;
    padding-bottom: 2000px;
}
.thrColFixHdr #sidebar2 {
    float: right; /* since this element is floated, a width must be given */
    width: 160px; /* the actual width of this div, in standards-compliant browsers, or standards mode in Internet Explorer will include the padding and border in addition to the width */
    background: #EBEBEB; /* the background color will be displayed for the length of the content in the column, but no further */
    padding: 15px 10px 15px 20px; /* padding keeps the content of the div away from the edges */
    margin-bottom: -2000px;
    padding-bottom: 2000px;
}
.thrColFixHdr #mainContent { 
    margin: 0 200px; /* the right and left margins on this div element creates the two outer columns on the sides of the page. No matter how much content the sidebar divs contain, the column space will remain. You can remove this margin if you want the #mainContent div's text to fill the sidebar spaces when the content in each sidebar ends. */
    padding: 0 10px; /* remember that padding is the space inside the div box and margin is the space outside the div box */
} 
.thrColFixHdr #footer { 
    padding: 0 10px 0 20px; /* this padding matches the left alignment of the elements in the divs that appear above it. */
    background:#DDDDDD;
} 
.thrColFixHdr #footer p {
    margin: 0; /* zeroing the margins of the first element in the footer will avoid the possibility of margin collapse - a space between divs */
    padding: 10px 0; /* padding on this element will create space, just as the the margin would have, without the margin collapse issue */
}
.fltrt { /* this class can be used to float an element right in your page. The floated element must precede the element it should be next to on the page. */
    float: right;
    margin-left: 8px;
}
.fltlft { /* this class can be used to float an element left in your page */
    float: left;
    margin-right: 8px;
}
.clearfloat { /* this class should be placed on a div or break element and should be the final element before the close of a container that should fully contain a float */
    clear:both;
    height:0;
    font-size: 1px;
    line-height: 0px;
}
--> 
</style><!--[if IE 5]>
<style type="text/css"> 
/* place css box model fixes for IE 5* in this conditional comment */
.thrColFixHdr #sidebar1 { width: 180px; }
.thrColFixHdr #sidebar2 { width: 190px; }
</style>
<![endif]--><!--[if IE]>
<style type="text/css"> 
/* place css fixes for all versions of IE in this conditional comment */
.thrColFixHdr #sidebar2, .thrColFixHdr #sidebar1 { padding-top: 30px; }
.thrColFixHdr #mainContent { zoom: 1; }
/* the above proprietary zoom property gives IE the hasLayout it needs to avoid several bugs */
</style>
<![endif]--></head>

<body class="thrColFixHdr">

<div id="container">
  <div id="header">
    <h1>Header</h1>
  <!-- end #header --></div>
  <div id="contentContainer">
      <div id="sidebar1">
      <h3>Sidebar1 Content</h3>
        <p>The background color on this div will only show for the length of the content. If you'd like a dividing line instead, place a border on the left side of the #mainContent div if it will always contain more content. </p>
        <p>Donec eu mi sed turpis feugiat feugiat. Integer turpis arcu, pellentesque  eget, cursus et, fermentum ut, sapien. </p>
      <!-- end #sidebar1 --></div>
      <div id="sidebar2">
        <h3>Sidebar2 Content</h3>
        <p>The background color on this div will only show for the length of the content. If you'd like a dividing line instead, place a border on the right side of the #mainContent div if it will always contain more content. </p>
        <p>Donec eu mi sed turpis feugiat feugiat. Integer turpis arcu, pellentesque  eget, cursus et, fermentum ut, sapien. </p>
      <!-- end #sidebar2 --></div>
      <div id="mainContent">
        <h1> Main Content </h1>
        <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Praesent aliquam,  justo convallis luctus rutrum, erat nulla fermentum diam, at nonummy quam  ante ac quam. Maecenas urna purus, fermentum id, molestie in, commodo  porttitor, felis. Nam blandit quam ut lacus. Quisque ornare risus quis  ligula. Phasellus tristique purus a augue condimentum adipiscing. Aenean  sagittis. Etiam leo pede, rhoncus venenatis, tristique in, vulputate at,  odio. Donec et ipsum et sapien vehicula nonummy. Suspendisse potenti. </p>
        <h2>H2 level heading </h2>
        <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Praesent aliquam,  justo convallis luctus rutrum, erat nulla fermentum diam, at nonummy quam  ante ac quam. Maecenas urna purus, fermentum id, molestie in, commodo  porttitor, felis. Nam blandit quam ut lacus. Quisque ornare risus quis  ligula. Phasellus tristique purus a augue condimentum adipiscing. Aenean  sagittis. Etiam leo pede, rhoncus venenatis, tristique in, vulputate at, odio.</p>
        <!-- end #mainContent --></div>
        <!-- This clearing element should immediately follow the #mainContent div in order to force the #container div to contain all child floats --><br class="clearfloat" />
  </div>
  <div id="footer">
    <p>Footer</p>
  <!-- end #footer --></div>
<!-- end #container --></div>
</body>
</html>

    This uses the technique described in http://www.ejeliot.com/samples/equal-height-columns/example-4.html of the page you linked where there is a negative bottom margin used for each of the columns and then a container with overflow hidden in order to hide the rough edges. I didn’t apply the technique to the middle column since it appear that column will always be the longest but if you end up in a situation where the middle column isn’t the longest and causes layout issues you can apply the same technique by including 

    margin-bottom: -2000px;
padding-bottom: 2000px;

    in the style for it.

    Just to sum up, what I did was add a container div that encompasses the three columns in your layout. I then added an overflow hidden for the container and the margin & padding shown above to the columns.

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