css - min height by number of lines

Question

I think I already know the answer to this one, but i hope maybe someone will have a some neat trick for that .

I want to specify a min-height of a DIV , but not px / % based . (I know it sounds strange , but it is for compatibility reasons / responsiveness)

Basically I want to be able to specify it by number of lines .

I have a grid of DIVS , but the elements inside are not fixed, so one element can have 3 lines, and the next one only 2 or 1 line . this messes up the layout .

Basically , what I need is THIS :

    =====================      =====================      =====================
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit      Lorem ipsum dolor sit      Lorem ipsum dolor sit 
    amet, consectetur          amet, consectetur          amet, consectetur
    adipiscing elit.
    =====================      =====================      =====================

    =====================      =====================      =====================
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit      Lorem ipsum dolor sit      Lorem ipsum dolor sit 
    amet, consectetur          amet, consectetur 
                               adipiscing elit.
    =====================      =====================      =====================

and NOT this :

=====================      =====================      =====================
Lorem ipsum dolor sit      Lorem ipsum dolor sit      Lorem ipsum dolor sit 
amet, consectetur          amet, consectetur          amet, consectetur
adipiscing elit.           =====================      =====================
=====================
                           =====================      =====================
=====================      Lorem ipsum dolor sit      Lorem ipsum dolor sit
Lorem ipsum dolor sit      amet, consectetur          =====================
amet, consectetur          =====================  
adipiscing elit.             
===================== 

can this sort of thing can be achieved by specified "I want 3 lines" ? (As opposed to pixels, percentage / em ??)

Edit I

After comments -

What I really want is something like the FORM elements , INPUT or TEXTAREA where you can simply specify the height and width by lines / characters !

<TEXTAREA NAME=string, ROWS=n, COLS=n> </TEXTAREA>

It is hard o believe that no one has invented such a solution and left us all to struggle with PX / em / % calculations and the likes ..

Answer 1

Why are you so opposed to the idea of setting min-height in ems? If you have line-height set in ems, multiply that by three and you got your desired height!

div {
    line-height:1.5em;
    min-height:4.5em;
    float:left;
    width:33%;/*close enough*/
}

Fiddled

Update: setting min-height to three lines is an exercise in futility - it does not account for scenarios where content does not fit into the space available. You could use faux columns instead to make content appear to be of uniform height within the row

Answer 2

I accomplished this by using flexbox and min-height.

Have each of your div elements within a flexbox container to get them to have the same height and react responsively (i.e. use breakpoints, flexbox wrap, and min-width to ensure that the probability of having more than 3 lines of text is low). Then for each of your internal elements, set the min-height and line-height values like @o.v. suggested. min-height should equal font-size * line-height multiplier.

I needed the internal paragraphs to be at least 2 lines high (there is a high probability that they would contain 1 or 2 lines of text, with a very low probability that they would contain more than 2 lines of text), so this is what I ended up with:

HTML

<div class="flex-container">
  <div>
    <p>Lorem ipsum...</p>
    <p>Lorem ipsum...</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>Lorem ipsum...</p>
    <p>Lorem ipsum...</p>
  </div>
</div>

CSS

div.flex-container {
  display: flex;
}
div.flex-container p {
  font-size: 1em;
  line-height: 1.125; // Default is 1.2, but varies by browser
  min-height: 2.25em; // 2 * 1em * 1.125
                      // (number of lines) * (font-size) * (line-height multiplier)
}

Answer 3

You should use a clearfix hack

It will allow you to get your divs aligned without specifying any height. It's like a line separator :

=====================      =====================      =====================
Lorem ipsum dolor sit      Lorem ipsum dolor sit      Lorem ipsum dolor sit 
amet, consectetur          amet, consectetur          amet, consectetur
adipiscing elit.           =====================      =====================
=====================      
{clearfix}
=====================      =====================      =====================
Lorem ipsum dolor sit      Lorem ipsum dolor sit      Lorem ipsum dolor sit 
amet, consectetur          amet, consectetur          =====================
=====================      adipiscing elit.
                           =====================

You still can set height / margin on each div, of course :

EDIT :

For an internal equal size without using tables, you've got several solutions :

Using overflow:hidden on the parent and an extra margin-bottom on children if you only use background.

Using display-table attribute (Method 1)

Or using javascript (Method 3)