Can I stop 100% Width Text Boxes from extending beyond their containers?

Lets say I have a text box that I want to fill a whole line. I would give it a style like this:

input.wide {display:block; width: 100%}

This causes problems because the width is based on the content of the text box. Text boxes have margin, borders, & padding by default, which makes a 100% width text box larger than its container.

For example, here on the right:

enter image description here

Is there any way to make a text box fill the width of its container without expanding beyond it?

Here is some example HTML to show what I mean:

<!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>
    <title>Untitled Page</title>
    <style type="text/css">
        #outer{border: 1px solid #000; width: 320px; margin: 0px;padding:0px}
        #inner{margin: 20px; padding: 20px; background: #999;border: 1px solid #000;}
        input.wide {display:block; margin: 0px}
        input.normal {display:block; float: right}
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <div id="outer">
        <div id="inner">
            <input type="text" class="wide" />
            <input type="text" class="normal" />
            <div style="clear:both;"></div>
        </div>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

If this is run, you can see by looking at the "normal" text box that the "wide" text box is sticking out beyond the container. The "normal" text box floats to the actual edge of the container. I'm trying to make the "wide" text box fill its container, without expanding beyond edge like the "normal" text box is.

Is there any way to make a text box fill the width of its container without expanding beyond it?

Yes: by using the CSS3 property ‘box-sizing: border-box’, you can redefine what ‘width’ means to include the external padding and border.

Unfortunately because it's CSS3, support isn't very mature, and as the spec process isn't finished yet, it has different temporary names in browsers in the meantime. So:

input.wide {
    width: 100%;
    box-sizing: border-box;
    -moz-box-sizing: border-box;
    -webkit-box-sizing: border-box;
}

The old-school alternative is simply to put a quantity of ‘padding-right’ on the enclosing <div> or <td> element equal to about how much extra left-and-right padding/border in ‘px’ you think browsers will give the input. (Typically 6px for IE<8.)

What you could do is to remove the default "extras" on the input:

input.wide {display:block; width:100%;padding:0;border-width:0}

This will keep the input inside its container. Now if you do want the borders, wrap the input in a div, with the borders set on the div (that way you can remove the display:block from the input too). Something like:

<div style="border:1px solid gray;">
 <input type="text" class="wide" />
</div>

Edit: Another option is to, instead of removing the style from the input, compensate for it in the wrapped div:

input.wide {width:100%;}

<div style="padding-right:4px;padding-left:1px;margin-right:2px">
  <input type="text" class="wide" />
</div>

This will give you somewhat different results in different browsers, but they will not overlap the container. The values in the div depend on how large the border is on the input and how much space you want between the input and the border.

This solved the problem for me!

Without the need for an external div. Just apply it to your given text box.

box-sizing: border-box;

With this property "The width and height properties (and min/max properties) includes content, padding and border, but not the margin"

See description of property at w3schools.

Hope this helps someone!

Just came across this problem myself, and the only solution I could find that worked in all my test browsers (IE6, IE7, Firefox) was the following:

Wrap the input field in two separate DIVs
Set the outer DIV to width 100%, this prevents our container from overflowing the document
Put padding in the inner DIV of the exact amount to compensate for the horizontal overflow of the input.
Set custom padding on the input so it overflows by the same amount as I allowed for in the inner DIV

The code:

<div style="width: 100%">
    <div style="padding-right: 6px;">
        <input type="text" style="width: 100%; padding: 2px; margin: 0;
                                  border : solid 1px #999" />
    </div>
</div>

Here, the total horizontal overflow for the input element is 6px - 2x(padding + border) - so we set a padding-right for the inner DIV of 6px.

Can I stop 100% Width Text Boxes from extending beyond their containers?

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