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I'm working on an HTML5 browser game that can be divided into 3 parts: two UI panels on the left and right of a center set of square canvases for the playing surface. The three panels need to be horizontally aligned, and the total game needs to keep an aspect ratio of 16:9. The left and right panels should be of equal widths, and all three panels must be of equal height. I have specified a minimum width and height inside a resize() function called when an onresize event is detected.
Currently, each panel is a div, and all three are contained inside a section. Right now, the section isn't necessary, but I want to keep the game separated from extra content at the bottom of the screen that I might choose to add later.
The CSS style is as follows:
* {
vertical-align: baseline;
font-weight: inherit;
font-family: inherit;
font-style: inherit;
font-size: 100%;
border: 0 none;
outline: 0;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}
#gameSection {
white-space: nowrap;
overflow-x: hide;
overflow-y: hide;
}
#leftPanel, #centerPanel, #rightPanel {
display: inline-block;
}
#leftPanel {
background-color: #6495ed;
}
#centerPanel {
background-color: #e0ffff;
}
#rightPanel {
background-color: #b0c4de;
Right now, I have set the background color of each div just to show me when I'm correctly setting the size of each div.
The body of my HTML document is as follows:
<body onresize="resize()">
<section id="gameSection">
<div id="leftPanel">Left Panel.</div>
<div id="centerPanel">Center Panel.</div>
<div id="rightPanel">Right Panel.</div>
</section>
</body>
And finally, my resize() function (I created a separate function for resizing the game in case I add more elements below later):
function resize() {
var MIN_GAME_WIDTH = 800;
var MIN_GAME_HEIGHT = 450;
var GAME_ASPECT_RATIO = 16 / 9;
var width = window.innerWidth;
var height = window.innerHeight;
var gWidth, gHeight;
if(width < MIN_GAME_WIDTH || height < MIN_GAME_HEIGHT) {
gWidth = MIN_GAME_WIDTH;
gHeight = MIN_GAME_HEIGHT;
}
else if ((width / height) > GAME_ASPECT_RATIO) {
<!-- width is too large for height -->
gHeight = height;
gWidth = height * GAME_ASPECT_RATIO;
}
else {
<!-- height is too large for width -->
gWidth = width;
gHeight = width / GAME_ASPECT_RATIO;
}
resizeGame(gWidth, gHeight, GAME_ASPECT_RATIO);
}
function resizeGame(var gWidth, var gHeight, var aspectRatio) {
var gSection = document.getElementById("gameSection");
var lPanel = document.getElementById("leftPanel");
var cPanel = document.getElementById("centerPanel");
var rPanel = document.getElementById("rightPanel");
gSection.height = gHeight;
gSection.width = gWidth;
<!-- should the below be taken care of in the CSS? -->
lPanel.height = gHeight;
cPanel.height = gHeight;
rPanel.height = gHeight;
cPanel.width = cPanel.height;
lPanel.width = (gWidth - cPanel.width) / 2;
rPanel.width = lPanel.width;
}
I've tried a number of different commands to resize the divs, but it just isn't working for me. When I try adding test canvases, color appears, but the boxes still aren't the correct size. I have also considered loading an invisible background image to each div and scaling it to the desired size; however, I was able to resize my canvas using the above method before and it seemed to work just fine.
Additional Notes
While I've already had pretty good success resizing a single canvas, I don't want to use just one canvas for the game because not all parts of the UI need to be drawn at the same time.
I'm trying to keep this solely in Javascript.
I suspect that I could just use CSS to handle resizing by fixing the aspect ratio to 16:9 and using width:56.25% for the center panel and width:21.875% for the side panels, but that limits me to one aspect ratio and doesn't explain why my above script isn't working.
I can provide the entire HTML file if needed. This is what it's supposed to look like: End Goal (without right panel)
Thank you!
UDPATE:
jsfiddle
333
asked Jul 30 '26 16:07
I got it kind of working here. I made a lot of changes/minor fixes to the code before finding what was wrong (other than various syntax errors):
You were using .width and .height instead of .style.width and .style.height, and you were applying integers to these instead of strings with "px" appended to them. Both of these things are completely understandable to miss.
I also moved the onresize from the body tag into the JS, don't know why it wasn't working on jsfiddle, but this is good practice anyways.
In the future: learn how to debug JS using the console and when you ask questions, use small examples, not your entire codebase. This question could have been simplified to "How do I resize a div?" with one line of JS and one div. You also should consider not doing this specific thing in JS, and using flexbox as redbmk said.
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