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Asked: 2026-05-29T06:16:20+00:00

I have this layout where the my_menu is fixed at the top, followed by

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I have this layout where the my_menu is fixed at the top, followed by header, followed by content with 960px and centered, in which 3 columns have been floated left and finally followed by a sticky footer.

  1. The problem is How to make the content stretch to the 100% height
    even if there is not enough content in any one of the child columns?

  2. How make the 3 columns equal height regardless of any column’s
    content?

  3. Maintain the sticky footer! Pure CSS, No JavaScript, No
    JQuery!

The HTML Markup

<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html lang="en"> 
<head> 
<meta charset="utf-8" /> 
<title>Document Title</title> 
<link rel="stylesheet" href="main.css" type="text/css" /> 
</head> 
<body id="index"> 
<div id="wrapper"> 
    <div id="my_menu"> 
    FIXED MENU WIDTH 100% 
    </div> 
    <div id="my_header"> 
    HEADER WIDTH 100% 
    </div> 
    <div id="content"> 
        <p>CONTENT 960px</p> 
        <div id="col1" class="content_columns"> 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 1 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        </div> 
        <div id="col2" class="content_columns"> 
        COLUMN 2 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 2 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 2 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 2 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 2 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 2 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 2 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 2 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 2 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        </div> 
        <div id="col3" class="content_columns"> 
        COLUMN 3 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 3 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 3 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 3 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        COLUMN 3 WIDTH 320px HEIGHT 100% 
        </div> 
        <div class="clear_floats"></div> <!-- For Clearing Floats --> 
    </div> 
    <div class="push"></div> <!-- For Sticky Footer --> 
</div> 
    <div id="my_footer"> 
    STICKY FOOTER WIDTH 100% 
    </div> 
</body> 
</html>

The CSS Styles

* /* For CSS Reset */ 
{ 
padding: 0; 
margin: 0; 
} 

html, body 
{ 
width: 100%; 
height: 100%; 
} 

div#wrapper 
{ 
width: 100%; 
height: 100%; 
min-height: 100%; /* For Sticky Footer */ 
height: auto !important; /* For Sticky Footer */ 
margin: 0 auto -70px; /* For Sticky Footer */ 
} 

div#my_menu 
{ 
width: 100%; 
height: 50px; 
outline: 1px solid black; 
background-color: grey; 
text-align: center; 
position: fixed; 
} 

div#my_header 
{ 
width: 100%; 
height: 100px; 
outline: 1px solid black; 
background-color: yellow; 
text-align: center; 
padding-top: 50px; 
} 

div#content 
{ 
width: 960px; 
margin: 0 auto; 
outline: 1px solid black; 
background-color: brown; 
text-align: center; 
} 

div.content_columns 
{ 
width: 320px; 
outline: 1px solid black; 
background-color: gold; 
text-align: center; 
float: left; 
} 

div.clear_floats /* For Clearing Floats */ 
{ 
clear: both; 
} 

div#my_footer 
{ 
width: 100%; 
height: 70px; 
outline: 1px solid black; 
background-color: pink; 
text-align: center; 
} 

div.push /* For Sticky Footer */ 
{ 
height: 70px; 
}
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    A solution with full IE6+ support. I’ll pull out and explain the relevant bits of code.

    Modern support

    div.content_columns {
    width: 320px;
    outline: 1px solid black;
    background-color: gold;
    text-align: center;
    display: table-cell; /* No floats, this instead */
}

    So, since modern browsers make this task easy, all we need to do is use display: table-cell to get this to work. It makes the columns equal height, and acts as a table-cell. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

    IE 6 & 7 support

    <!--[if lte IE 7]>
<style>
    div#content {
        overflow: hidden;
    }
    div.content_columns {
        vertical-align: top;
        display: inline;
        zoom:1;
        padding-bottom: 9999px;
        margin-bottom: -9999px;
    }
</style>
<![endif]-->

    Now, for IE 6 and 7 support we’re going to use a few tricks. First off, it should be noted that this doesn’t have to be done in a conditional comment, but I like it better that way. Cleaner to me. But you can use CSS hacks to get these values to only work in IE.

    What we’re doing is getting IE 6 & 7 to treat each column as an inline-block element, but since they don’t support that (for block level elements at least) we use inline display, and a zoom: 1; fix to trigger IE’s hasLayout property. This will treat it like it is an inline-block elmenent. Then, we set them all to be aligned at the top with each other, and use another little trick. We use the padding: 9999px to extend the bottom of the element so far that the other elements are not likely to be longer than it, and we use margin: -9999px; to not change the rendering of the page when we do so. We don’t want to extend the page, just the background. 9999px is arbitrary and can be any value as long as it is high enough to be greater than the difference between the longest and shortest columns. And for the final touches, we set overflow: hidden on the container element so that the backgrounds don’t extend the page by bleeding out the bottom.

    And there you have it, full IE 6+ support for multicolumn fixed width layout using pure CSS 2 (plus MS zoom).

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