Expand div to max width when float:left is set
I have something like that:
<div style="width:100px;float:left">menu</div>
<div style="float:left">content</div>
both floats are neccesary. I want the content div to fill the whole screen minus those 100px for the menu. If i dont use float the div expands exactly as it should. But how do i set this when float is set? If i use sth like
style=width:100%
then the content div gets the size of the parent, which is either the body or another div which i also tried, and so of course it does not fit right of the menu and is then shown below.
Hope I've understood you correctly, take a look at this: http://jsfiddle.net/EAEKc/
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8" />
<title>Content with Menu</title>
<style>
.content .left {
float: left;
width: 100px;
background-color: green;
}
.content .right {
margin-left: 100px;
background-color: red;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="content">
<div class="left">
<p>Hi, Flo!</p>
</div>
<div class="right">
<p>is</p>
<p>this</p>
<p>what</p>
<p>you are looking for?</p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>The most cross-compatible way I've found of doing this is not very obvious. You need to remove the float from the second column, and apply overflow:hidden to it. Although this would seem to be hiding any content that goes outside of the div, it actually forces the div to stay within its parent.
Using your code, this is an example of how it could be done:
<div style="width: 100px; float: left;">menu</div>
<div style="overflow: hidden;">content</div>
Hope this is useful to anyone having this issue, it's what I found works the best for the site I was building, after trying to get it to adjust to other resolutions. Unfortunately, this doesn't to work if you include a right-floated div after the content as well, if anyone knows a good way to get that to work, with good IE compatibility, I'd be very happy to hear it.
New, better option using display: flex;
Now that the Flexbox model is fairly widely implemented, I'd actually recommend using it instead, since it allows much more flexibility with the layout. Here's a simple two-column like the original:
<div style="display: flex;">
<div style="width: 100px;">menu</div>
<div style="flex: 1;">content</div>
</div>
And here's a three-column with a flexible-width center column!
<div style="display: flex;">
<div style="width: 100px;">menu</div>
<div style="flex:1;">content</div>
<div style="width: 100px;">sidebar</div>
</div>