Div height 100% and expands to fit content

Question

Here is what you should do in the CSS style, on the main div

display: block;
overflow: auto;

And do not touch height

Set the height to auto and min-height to 100%. This should solve it for most browsers.

body {
  position: relative;
  height: auto;
  min-height: 100% !important;
}

Usually this problem arises when the Child elements of a Parent Div are floated. Here is the Latest Solution of the problem:

In your CSS file write the following class called .clearfix along with the pseudo selector :after

.clearfix:after {
content: "";
display: table;
clear: both;
}

Then, in your HTML, add the .clearfix class to your parent Div. For example:

<div class="clearfix">
    <div></div>
    <div></div>
</div>

It should work always. You can call the class name as .group instead of .clearfix , as it will make the code more semantic. Note that, it is Not necessary to add the dot or even a space in the value of Content between the double quotation "". Also, overflow: auto; might solve the problem but it causes other problems like showing the scroll-bar and is not recommended.

Source: Blog of Lisa Catalano and Chris Coyier

If you just leave the height: 100% and use display:block; the div will take as much space as the content inside the div. This way all the text will stay in the black background.

This question may be old, but it deserves an update. Here is another way to do that:

#yourdiv {
    display: flex;
    width:100%;
    height:100%;
}

Try this:

body { 
    min-height:100%; 
    background:red; 
} 

#some_div {
    min-height:100%; 
    background:black; 
} 

IE6 and earlier versions do not support the min-height property.

I think the problem is that when you tell the body to have a height of 100%, it's background can only be as tall as the hieght of one browser "viewport" (the viewing area that excludes the browsers toolbars & statusbars & menubars and the window edges). If the content is taller than one viewport, it will overflow the height devoted to the background.

This min-height property on the body should FORCE the background to be at least as tall as one viewport if your content does not fill one whole page down to the bottom, yet it should also let it grow downwards to encompass more interior content.

Old question, but in my case i found using position:fixed solved it for me. My situation might have been a little different though. I had an overlayed semi transparent div with a loading animation in it that I needed displayed while the page was loading. So using height:auto / 100% or min-height: 100% both filled the window but not the off-screen area. Using position:fixed made this overlay scroll with the user, so it always covered the visible area and kept my preloading animation centred on the screen.