CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlcsswidth
George Snider
George Snider

Reputation:

How can I make a div not larger than its contents?

I have a layout similar to:

<div>
    <table>
    </table>
</div>

I would like for the div to only expand to as wide as my table becomes.

Upvotes: 2529

Views: 1925726

Answers (30)

uvi
uvi

Reputation: 84

The solution is to set your .table-badge class to display: inline-block

Upvotes: 2

Hamza
Hamza

Reputation: 811

Just put a style into your CSS file

div { 
    width: fit-content; 
}

Upvotes: 34

trojan
trojan

Reputation: 1535

The answer for your question lays in the future my friend ...

namely "intrinsic" is coming with the latest CSS3 update

width: intrinsic;

unfortunately IE is behind with it so it doesn't support it yet

More about it: CSS Intrinsic & Extrinsic Sizing Module Level 3 and Can I Use?: Intrinsic & Extrinsic Sizing.

For now you have to be satisfied with <span> or <div> set to

display: inline-block;

Upvotes: 46

Daft Wullie
Daft Wullie

Reputation: 453

width:1px;
white-space: nowrap;

works fine for me :)

Upvotes: 42

Soviut
Soviut

Reputation: 91605

A CSS2 compatible solution is to use:

.my-div
{
    min-width: 100px;
}

You can also float your div which will force it as small as possible, but you'll need to use a clearfix if anything inside your div is floating:

.my-div
{
    float: left;
}

Upvotes: 41

youngrrrr
youngrrrr

Reputation: 3286

This has been mentioned in comments and is hard to find in one of the answers so:

If you are using display: flex for whatever reason, you can instead use:

div {
    display: inline-flex;
}

This is also widely supported across browsers.

Upvotes: 36

Rajilesh Panoli
Rajilesh Panoli

Reputation: 790

Seems it's a 13 years old question.

.div{
display:inline-block;
}

or

.div{
display:inline-flex;
}

would work now a days without any compatibility issues.

Upvotes: -3

Showrin Barua
Showrin Barua

Reputation: 1795

You can try this code. Follow the code in the CSS section.

div {
  display: inline-block;
  padding: 2vw;
  background-color: green;
}

table {
  width: 70vw;
  background-color: white;
}
<div>
    <table border="colapsed">
      <tr>
        <td>Apple</td>
        <td>Banana</td>
        <td>Strawberry</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>Apple</td>
        <td>Banana</td>
        <td>Strawberry</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>Apple</td>
        <td>Banana</td>
        <td>Strawberry</td>
      </tr>
    </table>
</div>

Upvotes: 27

Coder_Naveed
Coder_Naveed

Reputation: 576

just set the width and height to fit-content. it is very simple.

div {

    width: fit-content;
    height: fit-content;
    padding: 10px;

}

I am adding padding: 10px;. if it is left out, the div element will completely stick with the table and it will look a bit clumsy. Padding will create the given space between the border of the element and it's contents. But it is your wish not compulsory.

Upvotes: 31

Trupti M Panchal
Trupti M Panchal

Reputation: 260

    .outer{
          width:fit-content;   
          display: flex;
          align-items: center;
    }
    .outer .content{
         width: 100%;
    }
        
        
        
        
<div class=outer>
    <div class=content>
       Add your content here


    </div>
        
</div>

Upvotes: 10

Awabil George
Awabil George

Reputation: 310

div{
width:fit-content;
}
<div>
    <table>
    </table>
</div>

Upvotes: 11

Codemaker2015
Codemaker2015

Reputation: 15649

Try to use width: max-content property to adjust the width of the div by it's content size.

Try this example,

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<style>
div.ex1 {
  width:500px;
  margin: auto;
  border: 3px solid #73AD21;
}

div.ex2 {
  width: max-content;
  margin: auto;
  border: 3px solid #73AD21;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>

<div class="ex1">This div element has width 500px;</div>
<br>
<div class="ex2">Width by content size</div>

</body>
</html>

Upvotes: 23

Rehan Rabbani
Rehan Rabbani

Reputation: 1

You can use height: 100% and width for your choice. This makes the div not larger than its content.

Upvotes: -5

Edward
Edward

Reputation: 615

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
    <tr>
        <td>
            <div id="content_lalala">
                this content inside the div being inside a table, needs no inline properties and the table is the one expanding to the content of this div =)
            </div>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table>

I know people don't like tables sometimes, but I gotta tell you, I tried the css inline hacks, and they kinda worked in some divs but in others didn't, so, it was really just easier to enclose the expanding div in a table...and...it can have or not the inline property and still the table is the one that's gonna hold the total width of the content. =)

Upvotes: 20

Vinay Mehta
Vinay Mehta

Reputation: 137

I've a span inside a div and just setting margin: auto to the container div worked for me.

Upvotes: 3

Shuvo Habib
Shuvo Habib

Reputation: 2125

There are two better solutions

  1. display: inline-block;

    OR

  2. display: table;

Out of these two display:table; is better, because display: inline-block; adds an extra margin.

For display:inline-block; you can use the negative margin method to fix the extra space

Upvotes: 108

Harshana
Harshana

Reputation: 534

What if we define a global variable and use that for both.

:root {
    --table-width: 400px;
}

.container{
     width:var(--table-width);
     border: 1px solid black;   // easy visualization
}
.inner-table {
     width:var(--table-width);
     border: 1px solid red;   // easy visualization
}
<div class="container">
    <table class="inner-table">
       <tr>
           <td>abc</td>
       </tr>
    </table>
</div>

Upvotes: 1

Celmaun
Celmaun

Reputation: 24762

display: inline-block adds an extra margin to your element.

I would recommend this:

#element {
    display: table; /* IE8+ and all other modern browsers */
}

Bonus: You can also now easily center that fancy new #element just by adding margin: 0 auto.

Upvotes: 254

Alireza
Alireza

Reputation: 104870

OK, in many cases you even don't need to do anything as by default div has height and width as auto, but if it's not your case, applying inline-block display gonna work for you... look at the code I create for you and it's do what you looking for:

div {
  display: inline-block;
}
<div>
  <table>
    <tr>
      <td>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi ultrices feugiat massa sed laoreet. Maecenas et magna egestas, facilisis purus quis, vestibulum nibh.</td>
      <td>Nunc auctor aliquam est ac viverra. Sed enim nisi, feugiat sed accumsan eu, convallis eget felis. Pellentesque consequat eu leo nec pharetra. Aenean interdum enim dapibus diam.</td>
      <td>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi ultrices feugiat massa sed laoreet. Maecenas et magna egestas, facilisis purus quis, vestibulum nibh.</td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</div>

Upvotes: 30

ZhenyaUsenko
ZhenyaUsenko

Reputation: 403

You could use display: flex for parent element

#parentElement {
   display: flex;
   flex-direction: column;
   align-items: flex-start;
 }

Upvotes: 4

RPichioli
RPichioli

Reputation: 3345

You can use inline-block as @user473598, but beware of older browsers..

/* Your're working with */
display: inline-block;

/* For IE 7 */
zoom: 1;
*display: inline;

/* For Mozilla Firefox < 3.0 */
display:-moz-inline-stack;

Mozilla doesn’t support inline-block at all, but they have -moz-inline-stack which is about the same

Some cross-browser around inline-block display attribute: https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/cross-browser-inline-block/

You can see some tests with this attribute in: https://robertnyman.com/2010/02/24/css-display-inline-block-why-it-rocks-and-why-it-sucks/

Upvotes: 20

James
James

Reputation: 335

Try display: inline-block;. For it to be cross browser compatible please use the below css code.

div {
  display: inline-block;
  display:-moz-inline-stack;
  zoom:1;
  *display:inline;
  border-style: solid;
  border-color: #0000ff;
}
<div>
  <table>
    <tr>
      <td>Column1</td>
      <td>Column2</td>
      <td>Column3</td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</div>

Upvotes: 11

user473598
user473598

Reputation: 28687

The solution is to set your div to display: inline-block.

Upvotes: 2847

Jaimin Dave
Jaimin Dave

Reputation: 1222

<div class="parentDiv" style="display:inline-block">
    // HTML elements
</div>

This will make parent div width same as the largest element width.

Upvotes: 11

user6558785
user6558785

Reputation:

My CSS3 flexbox solution in two flavors: The one on top behaves like a span and the one at the bottom behaves like a div, taking all the width with the help of a wrapper. Their classes are "top", "bottom" and "bottomwrapper" respectively.

body {
    font-family: sans-serif;
}
.top {
    display: -webkit-inline-flex;
    display: inline-flex;
}
.top, .bottom {
    background-color: #3F3;
    border: 2px solid #FA6;
}
/* bottomwrapper will take the rest of the width */
.bottomwrapper {
    display: -webkit-flex;
    display: flex;
}
table {
    border-collapse: collapse;
}
table, th, td {
    width: 280px;
    border: 1px solid #666;
}
th {
    background-color: #282;
    color: #FFF;
}
td {
    color: #444;
}
th, td {
    padding: 0 4px 0 4px;
}
Is this
<div class="top">
	<table>
        <tr>
            <th>OS</th>
            <th>Version</th> 
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>OpenBSD</td>
            <td>5.7</td> 
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>Windows</td>
            <td>Please upgrade to 10!</td> 
        </tr>
    </table>
</div>
what you are looking for?
<br>
Or may be...
<div class="bottomwrapper">
    <div class="bottom">
    	<table>
            <tr>
                <th>OS</th>
                <th>Version</th> 
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>OpenBSD</td>
                <td>5.7</td> 
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>Windows</td>
                <td>Please upgrade to 10!</td> 
            </tr>
        </table>
    </div>
</div>
this is what you are looking for.

Upvotes: 11

AJchandu
AJchandu

Reputation: 141

div{
  width:auto;
  height:auto;
}

Upvotes: 6

NathanielSantley
NathanielSantley

Reputation: 293

I would just set padding: -whateverYouWantpx;

Upvotes: 2

2hamed
2hamed

Reputation: 9067

Tampering around with Firebug I found the property value -moz-fit-content which exactly does what the OP wanted and could be used as follow:

width: -moz-fit-content;

Although it only works on Firefox, I couldn't find any equivalent for other browsers such as Chrome.

Upvotes: 11

Bondsmith
Bondsmith

Reputation: 1578

Revised (works if you have multiple children): You can use jQuery (Look at the JSFiddle link)

var d= $('div');
var w;


d.children().each(function(){
 w = w + $(this).outerWidth();
 d.css('width', w + 'px')
});

Do not forget to include the jQuery...

See the JSfiddle here

Upvotes: 5

Novice
Novice

Reputation: 558

We can use any of the two ways on the div element: 

display: table;

or,

display: inline-block;

I prefer to use display: table;, because it handles, all extra spaces on its own. While display: inline-block needs some extra space fixing.

Upvotes: 7

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