How to prevent a DIV from expanding in width?

Question

How do I prevent a div from expanding in width?

I'd like .dont-expand to pretend that width: 100%; means "100%, but not counting myself". Basically, compute width: 100%; (ignoring itself), and setting that width in pixels width: Npx; -- in CSS and not JS.

 .outer { position: absolute; border: 1px solid black; } /* This element sets the width of the container */ .has-width { width: 300px; margin-top: 10px; background: rgba(0,128,0,.2); border-right: 2px solid green; color: #888; } .dont-expand { /* width: ??? */ /* This would be nice */ /* expand: false; */ /* Or this */ /* width: toPx(100%); */ /* Or this */ /* width: calc(100% + 0px); */ }

 <div class="outer"> <div class="dont-expand"> How do I get this text to wrap instead of growing the container? </div> <div class="has-width"> I should be setting the width of "container". </div> </div>

jsbin link

Answer 1

It looks like you can make an element "appear" as 0 width to its parent, but still have it expand to the parent's width by doing: width: 0px; min-width: 100% width: 0px; min-width: 100% .

This seems to be the cleanest, most browser-compatible solution. It also doesn't require changing the display property, which is a plus.

 /* Make it "shrink-to-fit", either inline-block, or position: absolute */ .outer { /* position: absolute; */ display: inline-block; border: 1px solid black; } /* This element sets the width of the container */ .has-width { width: 300px; margin-top: 10px; background: rgba(0,128,0,.2); border-right: 2px solid green; color: #888; } /* Appears as 0 width to parent, but then expands to fit. */ .dont-expand { width: 0px; min-width: 100%; }

 <div class="outer"> <div class="dont-expand"> How do I get this text to wrap instead of growing the container? </div> <div class="has-width"> I should be setting the width of "container". </div> </div>

Answer 2

Try using

.outer {
  position: absolute;
  border: 1px solid black;
  width: min-content;
}

This should make it so that the width of the outer box becomes as small as possible, while not squashing content.

Answer 3

You may relay on the the table-layout property to shrink the container to the width of the smallest content.

You need then to set the width to .has-content to its actual content's width via max-content

.dont-expand requires no width, it will wrap inside the width avalaible, unless itself has a word or an image wider than .has-width , that is the only side behavior i know of.

example:

 .outer { position: absolute; border: 1px solid black; display: table; width: 0; } /* This element sets the width of the container */ .has-width { width: max-content; margin-top: 10px; background: rgba(0, 128, 0, .2); border-right: 2px solid green; color: #888; } .dont-expand { /* nothing needed here */ } .bis {bottom:0}

 <div class="outer"> <div class="dont-expand"> How do I get this text to wrap instead of growing the container? </div> <div class="has-width"> I should be setting the width of "container". </div> </div> <div class="outer bis "> <div class="dont-expand"> How do I get this text to wrap instead of growing the container? </div> <div class="has-width"> i'm container's width ! </div> </div>

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/table-layout

The table-layout CSS property sets the algorithm used to lay out cells, rows, and columns.

here , there's nothing else than 1 column since, children of .outer do not have a display reset . The idea is to only use the shrink/expand native properties of the table-layout display algorithm on the main wrapper and not rebuild a visual HTML table from div.

---

Play with this table-layout behavior to become familiar with it, and do not think about any HTML table tag, it's only about CSS styling ;)

Answer 4

Set the box-sizing property to "border-box"

.dont-expand {
  /* width: ?? */

  /* This would be nice       */
  /* expand: false;           */

  /* Or this                  */
  /* width: toPx(100%);       */

  /* Or this                  */
  /* width: calc(100% + 0px); */


  box-sizing: border-box;
}