How to force child div to be 100% of parent div's height without specifying parent's height?

Question

I have a site with the following structure:

  

  <         


        
      

Answer 1

NOTE: This answer is applicable to legacy browsers without support for the Flexbox standard. For a modern approach, see: https://stackoverflow.com/a/23300532/1155721

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I suggest you take a look at Equal Height Columns with Cross-Browser CSS and No Hacks.

Basically, doing this with CSS in a browser compatible way is not trivial (but trivial with tables) so find yourself an appropriate pre-packaged solution.

Also, the answer varies on whether you want 100% height or equal height. Usually it's equal height. If it's 100% height the answer is slightly different.