Quick question for the group; what’s the best way to build a div with an absolutely fixed height? The div is absolutely positioned, overflow is hidden, and I set the same value for max-height and min-height, but a colleague said it would have been sufficient to just set the height of the div.
TIA for your input and opinions!
I agree with your colleague.
Have you tried all options?
Are there any browser differences?
Height is equal to the same max height and width.
Yeah, agreed just use height. There should not be any browser differences when using height. Cheers!
OK… so here is the rub.
Your colleague is mostly right. setting max and min height is… overkill at least. height: whatever ;, will set the height of a BLOCK element ( such as a div). Of course , if the content of the element EXCEEDS the size of the element it will overflow… it’s just the way it works ( remember that mug “CSS ROCKS!”… google it). At this point you have a choice: add overflow to hide or scroll the overflowed content.
THEN THERE IS IE ( eating glue again), and this is probably what you are noticing older IE treats height as min-height AND it does recognize max/min-height at all. IE7 does not support “inherit” as a value on any of these properties. IE8 has some bugs with max-width/height combined with overflow: auto/scroll. 
Normally this worst in our favour when what we want is min-height, you case is the opposite. That’s where overflow comes in. The only caveat beign that you don’t really get a div (in old IE) which can be FIXED HEIGHT, and SHOW its overflow.