Question

I have an apparently easy problem which is:

<div class="container">
    <div class="a"></div>
    <div class="b"></div>
    <div class="c"></div>
</div>​

I have 3 divs inside a container: A and B have fixed heights. C must have an extendable height, it extends along with the container height. If the content inside C are too big, I’d like C to scroll but to keep A and B in the same place.

Code in: http://jsfiddle.net/V2c9G/

I’m not able to do it.

I tried:

<div class="container">
    <div class="a"></div>
    <div class="b"></div>
    <div class="xxx" style="overflow-y:scroll">
       <div class="c"></div>
    </div>
</div>​

without success. The container div it’s supposed to resize along the browser.

A complex example would be http://www.sencha.com/examples/#overview (I’m talking about the layout, make the browser smaller and you will see scrolls apperaring hile the headers keeps fixed) but it’s not a solution since it uses JS to recalculate the heights.

Any idea?

Answer 1

Edit 3:

This is my recommended solution, which uses CSS from the Edit 2 below as a fallback, but uses JavaScript to resize your divs appropriately onload and when your window size changes. The CSS solution provides a decent starting point if the client has JavaScript disabled, and the JavaScript is such that it really shouldn’t affect the performance of the page, so I see no reason not to use JavaScript to perfect what you want to see. A working fiddle can be seen here. Also, here is the appropriate JavaScript code:

var resizeDiv = function(){
    document.getElementById('c').style.height = getWindowHeight() - 64 + 'px';
};

//Framework code
var getWindowHeight = function(){
    if (window.innerHeight) {
        return window.innerHeight;
    }
    if (document.body && document.body.offsetHeight) {
        return document.body.offsetHeight;
    }
    if (document.compatMode=='CSS1Compat' &&
        document.documentElement &&
        document.documentElement.offsetHeight ) {
        return document.documentElement.offsetHeight;
    }

    return 740;//provide a default height as a fallback
};

//resize on pageload
window.onresize = resizeDiv;
setTimeout(resizeDiv);

---

I think you need to adjust the absolute height on your third div to take up the rest of the space (either absolutely or with percentages), set overflow to hidden on the parent div, and let the content in the third inner div determine whether to show the scrollbar or not. Here’s an updated fiddle using the absolute height method.

Edit:

From your “Imagine the container is the browser” comment (which to me means the scrollbar should be on the container), all you’d really have to do is set the overflow to ‘scroll’ and height in the third div to ‘auto’. Here’s an updated fiddle for that.

Edit #2:

According to your comment on this question, it sounds like you need to go with the percentage method. The most straightforward would be to make the height of a, b, and c a percentage (I had to tweak the margins to get it to fit for all zooms). Unfortunately with this method, the top components will not be fixed, and it sounds like you may be displaying static content there that would look funky. Thus, another option is to pick a minimum supported size for your browser window and adjust the percentage of the third element so that it just fits. Here’s a fiddle for that. However, the downside there is that you’ll have more empty space at the bottom of the page the bigger the height of the window, and you’ll have 2 scrollbars below a certain height. To really do this properly with the fixed sized divs at the top, you’ll need to add an event listener to the window.resize method and resize your third div when that happens appropriately based on the new size of the window.

Note: It is times like this where I wish the W3C would approve percentages plus pixels for their height, width, and other sizing properties!