2015 update: the flexbox approach
There are two other answers briefly mentioning flexbox; however, that was more than two years ago, and they don’t provide any examples. The specification for flexbox has definitely settled now.
Note: Though CSS Flexible Boxes Layout specification is at the Candidate Recommendation stage, not all browsers have implemented it. WebKit implementation must be prefixed with -webkit-; Internet Explorer implements an old version of the spec, prefixed with -ms-; Opera 12.10 implements the latest version of the spec, unprefixed. See the compatibility table on each property for an up-to-date compatibility status.
(taken from https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Flexible_boxes)
All major browsers and IE11+ support Flexbox. For IE 10 or older, you can use the FlexieJS shim.
To check current support you can also see here: http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox
Working example
With flexbox you can easily switch between any of your rows or columns either having fixed dimensions, content-sized dimensions or remaining-space dimensions. In my example I have set the header to snap to its content (as per the OPs question), I’ve added a footer to show how to add a fixed-height region and then set the content area to fill up the remaining space.
html, body { height: 100%; margin: 0; } .box { display: flex; flex-flow: column; height: 100%; } .box .row { border: 1px dotted grey; } .box .row.header { flex: 0 1 auto; /* The above is shorthand for: flex-grow: 0, flex-shrink: 1, flex-basis: auto */ } .box .row.content { flex: 1 1 auto; } .box .row.footer { flex: 0 1 40px; }
<!-- Obviously, you could use HTML5 tags like `header`, `footer` and `section` --> <div class="box"> <div class="row header"> <p><b>header</b> <br /> <br />(sized to content)</p> </div> <div class="row content"> <p> <b>content</b> (fills remaining space) </p> </div> <div class="row footer"> <p><b>footer</b> (fixed height)</p> </div> </div>
In the CSS above, the flex property shorthands the flex-grow, flex-shrink, and flex-basis properties to establish the flexibility of the flex items. Mozilla has a good introduction to the flexible boxes model.