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CSS Properties - Basic Exercises, Practice, Solution

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68 How to specify the optimal width for the columns?

HTML Code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>CSS Column-width Properties</title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

Try it in the following editor or see the solution.

a. How to let the column width be determined by the browser?

b. How to specify the width of the columns?

c. How to set the column-width to its default value?

See the Pen html css common editor by w3resource (@w3resource) on CodePen.


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HTML-CSS: Tips of the Day

Expand a div to fill the remaining width

The solution to this is actually very easy, but not at all obvious. You have to trigger something called a "block formatting context" (BFC), which interacts with floats in a specific way.

Just take that second div, remove the float, and give it overflow:hidden instead. Any overflow value other than visible makes the block it's set on become a BFC. BFCs don't allow descendant floats to escape them, nor do they allow sibling/ancestor floats to intrude into them. The net effect here is that the floated div will do its thing, then the second div will be an ordinary block, taking up all available width except that occupied by the float.

This should work across all current browsers, though you may have to trigger hasLayout in IE6 and 7. I can't recall.

Demos:

  • Fixed Left: http://jsfiddle.net/A8zLY/5/
  • Fixed Right: http://jsfiddle.net/A8zLY/2/
div {
  float: left;
}

.second {
  background: #ccc;
  float: none;
  overflow: hidden;
} 

<div>Tree</div>
<div class="second">View</div>