Make a DIV fill an entire table cell

Question

I've seen this question and googled a bit, but nothing so far has worked. I figure it's 2010 now (those questions/answers are old and, well, unanswered) and we have CSS3! Is there any way to get a div to fill an entire table cell's width and height using CSS?

I don't know what the width and/or height of the cell will be ahead of time, and setting the div's width and height to 100% does not work.

Also, the reason I need the div is because I need to absolutely position some elements outside of the cell, and position: relative does not apply to tds, so I need a wrapper div.

Answer 1

I had to set a fake height to the <tr> and height: inherit for <td>s

tr has height: 1px (it's ignored anyway)

Then set the td height: inherit

Then set the div to height: 100%

This worked for me in IE edge and Chrome:

<table style="width:200px;">
    <tr style="height: 1px;">
        <td style="height: inherit; border: 1px solid #000; width: 100px;">
            <div>
              Something big with multi lines and makes table bigger
            </div>
        </td>
        <td style="height: inherit; border: 1px solid #000; width: 100px;">
            <div style="background-color: red; height: 100%;">
                full-height div
            </div>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table>

Answer 2

div height=100% in table cell will work only when table has height attribute itself.

<table border="1" style="height:300px; width: 100px;">
 <tr><td>cell1</td><td>cell2</td></tr>
 <tr>
   <td style="height: 100%">
     <div style="height: 100%; width: 100%; background-color:pink;"></div>
   </td>
   <td>long text long text long text long text long text long text</td>
 </tr>
</table>

UPD in FireFox you should also set height=100% value to the parent TD element

Answer 3

So, because everyone is posting their solution and none was good for me, here is mine (tested on Chrome & Firefox).

table { height: 1px; } /* Will be ignored, don't worry. */
tr { height: 100%; }
td { height: 100%; }
td > div { height: 100%; }

Fiddle: https://jsfiddle.net/nh6g5fzv/

--

Edit: one thing you might want to note, if you want to apply a padding to the div in the td, you must add box-sizing: border-box; because of height: 100%.

Answer 4

The following code works on IE 8, IE 8's IE 7 compatibility mode, and Chrome (not tested elsewhere):

<table style="width:100px"> <!-- Not actually necessary; just makes the example text shorter -->
   <tr><td>test</td><td>test</td></tr>
   <tr>
      <td style="padding:0;">
         <div style="height:100%; width:100%; background-color:#abc; position:relative;">
            <img style="left:90px; position:absolute;" src="../Content/Images/attachment.png"/>
            test of really long content that causes the height of the cell to increase dynamically
         </div>
      </td>
      <td>test</td>
   </tr>
</table>

You said in your original question that setting width and height to 100% didn't work, though, which makes me suspect that there is some other rule overriding it. Did you check the computed style in Chrome or Firebug to see if the width/height rules were really being applied?

Edit

How foolish I am! The div was sizing to the text, not to the td. You can fix this on Chrome by making the div display:inline-block, but it doesn't work on IE. That's proving trickier...

Answer 5

If your reason for wanting a 100% div inside a table cell was to be able to have a background color extend to the full height but still be able to have spacing between the cells, you could give the <td> itself the background color and use the CSS border-spacing property to create the margin between the cells.

If you truly need a 100% height div, however, then as others here have mentioned you need to either assign a fixed height to the <table> or use Javascript.

Answer 6

Since every other browser (including IE 7, 8 and 9) handles position:relative on a table cell correctly and only Firefox gets it wrong, your best bet is to use a JavaScript shim. You shouldn’t have to alter your DOM for one failed browser. People use shims all the time when IE gets something wrong and all the other browsers get it right.

Here is a snippet with all the code annotated. The JavaScript, HTML and CSS use responsive web design practices in my example, but you don’t have to if you don’t want. (Responsive means it adapts to your browser width.)

http://jsfiddle.net/mrbinky3000/MfWuV/33/

Here is the code itself, but it doesn’t make sense without the context, so visit the jsfiddle URL above. (The full snippet also has plenty of comments in both the CSS and the Javascript.)

$(function() {
    // FireFox Shim
    if ($.browser.mozilla) {
        $('#test').wrapInner('<div class="ffpad"></div>');
        function ffpad() {
            var $ffpad = $('.ffpad'),
                $parent = $('.ffpad').parent(),
                w, h;
            $ffpad.height(0);
            if ($parent.css('display') == 'table-cell') {               
                h = $parent.outerHeight();
                $ffpad.height(h);
            }
        }
        $(window).on('resize', function() {
            ffpad();
        });
        ffpad();
    }
});

Answer 7

if <table> <tr> <td> <div> all have height: 100%; set, then the div will fill the dynamic cell height in all browsers.

Answer 8

after several days searching I figured out a possible fix for this issue.

 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Documento sin título</title>
</head>

<body style="height:100%">
<!-- for Firefox and Chrome compatibility set height:100% in the containing TABLE, the TR parent and the TD itself. -->
<table width="400" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="height:100%;">  
  <tr>
    <td>whatever</td>
    <td>whatever</td>
    <td>whatever</td>
  </tr>
  <tr style="height:100%;">
    <td>whatever dynamic height<br /><br /><br />more content
</td>
    <td>whatever</td>

    <!-- display,background-color and radius properties in TD BELOW could be placed in an <!--[if IE]> commentary If desired.
    This way TD would remain as display:table-cell; in FF and Chrome and would keep working correctly.    
    If you don't place the properties in IE commentary it will still work in FF and Chorme with a TD display:block;

    The Trick for IE is setting the cell to display:block; Setting radius is only an example of whay you may want a DIV 100%height inside a Cell.
    -->

    <td style="height:100%; width:100%; display:block; background-color:#3C3;border-radius: 0px 0px 1em 0px;">

    <div style="width:100%;height:100%;background-color:#3C3;-webkit-border-radius: 0px 0px 0.6em 0px;border-radius: 0px 0px 0.6em 0px;">
    Content inside DIV TAG
    </div>
     </td>
  </tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

Spanish language: El truco es establecer la Tabla, el TR y el TD a height:100%. Esto lo hace compatible con FireFox y Chrome. Internet Explorer ignora eso, por lo que ponemos la etiqueta TD como block. De esta forma Explorer sí toma la altura máxima.

English explanation: within the code commentaries

Answer 9

I propose a solution using the experimental Flexbox to simulate a table layout which will allow a cell's content element to fill up its parent cell vertically:

Demo

.table{ display:flex; border:2px solid red; }
.table > *{ flex: 1; border:2px solid blue; position:relative; }
.fill{ background:lightgreen; height:100%; position:absolute; left:0; right:0; }

/* Reset */
*{ padding:0; margin:0; }
body{ padding:10px; }

<div class='table'>
  <aside><div class='fill'>Green should be 100% height</div></aside>
  <aside></aside>
  <aside>
    <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Phasellus imperdiet, nulla et dictum interdum, nisi lorem egestas odio, vitae scelerisque enim ligula venenatis dolor. Maecenas nisl est, ultrices nec congue eget, auctor vitae massa. Fusce luctus vestibulum augue ut aliquet. Mauris ante ligula, facilisis sed ornare eu, lobortis in odio. Praesent convallis urna a lacus interdum ut hendrerit risus congue. Nunc sagittis dictum nisi, sed ullamcorper ipsum dignissim ac. In at libero sed nunc venenatis imperdiet sed ornare turpis. Donec vitae dui eget tellus gravida venenatis. Integer fringilla congue eros non fermentum. Sed dapibus pulvinar nibh tempor porta. Cras ac leo purus. Mauris quis diam velit. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Phasellus imperdiet, nulla et dictum interdum, nisi lorem egestas odio, vitae scelerisque enim ligula venenatis dolor. Maecenas nisl est, ultrices nec congue eget, auctor vitae massa. Fusce luctus vestibulum augue ut aliquet. Mauris ante ligula, facilisis sed ornare eu, lobortis in odio. Praesent convallis urna a lacus interdum ut hendrerit risus conguet.</p>
  </aside>
</div>

Answer 10

Because I do not have enough reputation to post a comment, I want to add a complete cross-browser solution that combined @Madeorsk and @Saadat's approaches with some slight modification! (Tested on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE, and Edge as of 2/10/2020)

table { height: 1px; }
tr { height: 100%; }
td { height: 100%; }
td > div { 
   height: -webkit-calc(100vh);
   height: -moz-calc(100vh);
   height: calc(100%);
   width: 100%;
    background: pink;  // This will show that it works!
} 

However, if you're like me, than you want to control vertical alignment as well, and in those cases, I like to use flexbox:

td > div {
    width: 100%;
    display: flex;
    align-items: center;
    justify-content: flex-end;
}