Width equal to content [duplicate]

Question

I'm experiencing some trouble with the width property of CSS. I have some paragraphs inside a div. I'd like to make the width of the paragraphs equal to their content, so that their green background looks like a label for the text. What I get instead is that the paragraphs inherit the width of the div father node which is wider.

#container {
  width: 30%;
  background-color: grey;
}

#container p {
  background-color: green;
}

<div id="container">
  <p>Sample Text 1</p>
  <p>Sample Text 2</p>
  <p>Sample Text 3</p>
</div>

Answer 1

I set width as max-content and it worked for me.

width: max-content;

Answer 2

By default p tags are block elements, which means they take 100% of the parent width.

You can change their display property with:

#container p {
   display:inline-block;
}

But it puts the elements side by side.

To keep each element on its own line you can use:

#container p {
   clear:both;
   float:left;
}

_{(If you use float and need to clear after floated elements, see this link for different techniques: http://css-tricks.com/all-about-floats/)}

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/CvJ3W/5/

Edit

If you go for the solution with display:inline-block but want to keep each item in one line, you can just add a <br> tag after each one:

<div id="container">
  <p>Sample Text 1</p><br/>
  <p>Sample Text 2</p><br/>
  <p>Sample Text 3</p><br/>
</div>

New demo: http://jsfiddle.net/CvJ3W/7/

Answer 3

The solution with inline-block forces you to insert <br> after each element.
The solution with float forces you to wrap all elements with "clearfix" div.

Another elegant solution is to use display: table for elements.

With this solution you don't need to insert line breaks manually (like with inline-block), you don't need a wrapper around your elements (like with floats) and you can center your element if you need.

http://jsfiddle.net/8md3jy4r/3/