Sticky footer - trying to understand the code

Sticky footer - trying to understand the code - html

I wanted to implement a sticky footer that will be pushed to bottom if content is less.
I have gone through various posts in this website and could see that two popular solutions (without flexbox) uses either
html, body
{
height: 100%;
}
OR
html
{
position: relative;
min-height: 100%;
}
I am posting only the parts of the solution which I did not understand. Posting my doubts here. Please help me to understand these solutions
(a) as stated, first solution uses 100% height for html and body. But what is 100% height here? Is it refers to the height of view port or height of the entire document?
(b) in first solution, If 100% height refers only to view port height, isn't it required to make the setting to min-height instead of height because if document is larger than the view port, restricting to 100% height is not relevant.
(c) I know we make a element relative so that its child absolute/relative elements gets position from it. But what is the meaning of making html relative as it has only document as its parent?
(d) also, from your experience is there any better solution (without flexbox)? Similarly there are many posts with respect to issues in mobile browsers while using such solutions (like ios8 issue when using 100vh). Whether these solutions have any such issues?
My html knowledge is very much limited. thanks for help.
Note: both solutions are working fine and giving sticky footer as required

A)
The html and body tags do not fill the entire window by default, so that code forces to be 100% of screen even when inside content is less.
Without:
With 100%:
B)
You can get away with having the <body> as 100% because the content inside by default will overflow and the <html> tag has overflow:auto on by default.
So, the following works, but the content will overflow the <body>
html, body {
height: 100%;
}
A better solution would be one of the following:
html, body {
height: 100%;
}
body {
overflow: auto;
}
Or
html{
height: 100%;
}
body {
min-height: 100%;
}

Related

how to i fit my background gif to the page? [duplicate]

I want to make body have 100% of the browser height. Can I do that using CSS?
I tried setting height: 100%, but it doesn't work.
I want to set a background color for a page to fill the entire browser window, but if the page has little content I get a ugly white bar at the bottom.

Try setting the height of the html element to 100% as well.
html,
body {
height: 100%;
}
Body looks to its parent (HTML) for how to scale the dynamic property, so the HTML element needs to have its height set as well.
However the content of body will probably need to change dynamically.
Setting min-height to 100% will accomplish this goal.
html {
height: 100%;
}
body {
min-height: 100%;
}

As an alternative to setting both the html and body element's heights to 100%, you could also use viewport-percentage lengths.
5.1.2. Viewport-percentage lengths: the ‘vw’, ‘vh’, ‘vmin’, ‘vmax’ units
The viewport-percentage lengths are relative to the size of the initial containing block. When the height or width of the initial containing block is changed, they are scaled accordingly.
In this instance, you could use the value 100vh - which is the height of the viewport.
Example Here
body {
height: 100vh;
padding: 0;
}
body {
min-height: 100vh;
padding: 0;
}
This is supported in most modern browsers - support can be found here.

If you have a background image then you will want to set this instead:
html{
height: 100%;
}
body {
min-height: 100%;
}
This ensures that your body tag is allowed to continue growing when the content is taller than the viewport and that the background image continues to repeat/scroll/whatever when you start scrolling down.
Remember if you have to support IE6 you will need to find a way to wedge in height:100% for body, IE6 treats height like min-height anyway.

If you want to keep the margins on the body and don't want scroll bars, use the following css:
html { height:100%; }
body { position:absolute; top:0; bottom:0; right:0; left:0; }
Setting body {min-height:100%} will give you scroll bars.
See demo at http://jsbin.com/aCaDahEK/2/edit?html,output .

After testing various scenarios, I believe this is the best solution:
html {
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
display: table;
}
body {
width: 100%;
display: table-cell;
}
html, body {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
It is dynamic in that the html and the body elements will expand automatically if their contents overflow. I tested this in the latest version of Firefox, Chrome, and IE 11.
See the full fiddle here (for you table haters out there, you can always change it to use a div):
https://jsfiddle.net/71yp4rh1/9/
With that being said, there are several issues with the answers posted here.
html, body {
height: 100%;
}
Using the above CSS will cause the html and the body element to NOT automatically expand if their contents overflow as shown here:
https://jsfiddle.net/9vyy620m/4/
As you scroll, notice the repeating background? This is happening because the body element's height has NOT increased due to its child table overflowing. Why doesn't it expand like any other block element? I'm not sure. I think browsers handle this incorrectly.
html {
height: 100%;
}
body {
min-height: 100%;
}
Setting a min-height of 100% on the body as shown above causes other problems. If you do this, you cannot specify that a child div or table take up a percentage height as shown here:
https://jsfiddle.net/aq74v2v7/4/
Hope this helps someone. I think browsers are handling this incorrectly. I would expect the body's height to automatically adjust growing larger if its children overflow. However, that doesn't seem to happen when you use 100% height and 100% width.

html, body
{
height: 100%;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}

A quick update
html, body{
min-height:100%;
overflow:auto;
}
A better solution with today's CSS
html, body{
min-height: 100vh;
overflow: auto;
}

What I use on the start of literally every CSS file I use is the following:
html, body{
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
min-width: 100%;
width: 100%;
max-width: 100%;
min-height: 100%;
height: 100%;
max-height: 100%;
}
The margin of 0 ensures that the HTML and BODY elements aren't being auto-positioned by the browser to have some space to the left or right of them.
The padding of 0 ensures that the HTML and BODY elements aren't automatically pushing everything inside them down or right because of browser defaults.
The width and height variants are set to 100% to ensure that the browser doesn't resize them in anticipation of actually having an auto-set margin or padding, with min and max set just in case some weird, unexplainable stuff happens, though you probably dont need them.
This solution also means that, like I did when I first started on HTML and CSS several years ago, you won't have to give your first <div> a margin:-8px; to make it fit in the corner of the browser window.
Before I posted, I looked at my other fullscreen CSS project and found that all I used there was just body{margin:0;} and nothing else, which has worked fine over the 2 years I've been working on it.
Hope this detailed answer helps, and I feel your pain. In my eyes, it is dumb that browsers should set an invisible boundary on the left and sometimes top side of the body/html elements.

Here:
html,body{
height:100%;
}
body{
margin:0;
padding:0
background:blue;
}

You can also use JS if needed
var winHeight = window.innerHeight ||
document.documentElement.clientHeight ||
document.body.clientHeight;
var pageHeight = $('body').height();
if (pageHeight < winHeight) {
$('.main-content,').css('min-height',winHeight)
}

I would use this
html, body{
background: #E73;
min-height: 100%;
min-height: 100vh;
overflow: auto; // <- this is needed when you resize the screen
}
<html>
<body>
</body>
</html>
The browser will use min-height: 100vh and if somehow the browser is a little older the min-height: 100% will be the fallback.
The overflow: auto is necessary if you want the body and html to expand their height when you resize the screen (to a mobile size for example)

CSS Height That Works in Both Modern and Legacy Browsers
Most of the other solutions posted here will not work well in legacy browsers! And some of the code people posted will cause a nasty overflow of text beyond 100% height in modern browsers where text flows past background colors, which is bad design! So please try my code solution instead.
The CSS code below should support flexible web page height settings correctly in all known browsers, past and present:
html {
height: 100%; /* Fallback CSS for IE 4-6 and older browsers. Note: Without this setting, body below cannot achieve 100% height. */
height: 100vh;/* Overrides 100% height in modern HTML5 browsers and uses the viewport's height. Only works in modern HTML5 browsers */
}
body {
height: auto; /* Allows content to grow beyond the page without overflow */
width: auto; /* Allows content to grow beyond the page without overflow */
min-height: 100%; /* Starts web page with 100% height. Fallback for IE 4-6 and older browsers */
min-height: 100vh;/* Starts web page with 100% height. Uses the viewport's height. Only works in modern HTML5 browsers */
overflow-y: scroll;/* Optional: Adds an empty scrollbar to the right margin in case content grows vertically, creating a scrollbar. Allows for better width calculations, as the browser pre-calculates width before scrollbar appears, avoiding page content shifting.*/
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
background:yellow;/* FOR TESTING: Next add a large block of text or content to your page and make sure this background color always fills the screen as your content scrolls off the page. If so, this works. You have 100% height with flexible content! */
}
NOTES ON THE CODE ABOVE
In many older, as well as newer browsers, if you do not set 100% height on the <html> selector, body will never achieve 100% height! So that is critical here.
The new viewport units ("vh") are redundant on the body selector and not necessary as long as you have set html selector to a height of either 100% or 100vh. The reason is the body always derives its values from the html parent. The exception is a few very old browsers from the past, so its best to set some height value for the body.
Some modern browsers using the body selector will not know how to inherit the viewport height directly. So again, always set your html selector to 100% height! You can still use "vh" units in body to bypass the parent html value and get its property dimensions directly from the viewport in most modern browsers, however. But again, its optional if the parent or root html selector has 100% height, which body will always inherit correctly.
Notice I've set body to height:auto, not height:100%. This collapses the body element around content initially so it can grow as content grows. You do NOT want to set body height and width to 100%, or specific values as that limits content to the body's current visual dimensions, not its scrollable dimensions. Anytime you assign body height:100%, as soon as content text moves beyond the browser's height, it will overflow the container and thus any backgrounds assigned to the original viewport height, creating an ugly visual! height:auto is your best friend in CSS!
But you still want body to default to 100% height, right? That is where min-height:100% works wonders! It will not only allow your body element to default to 100% height, but this works in even the oldest browsers! But best of all, it allows your background to fill 100% and yet stretch farther down as content with height:auto grows vertically.
Using overflow:auto properties are not needed if you set height:auto on the body. That tells the page to let content expand height to any dimension necessary, even beyond the viewport's height, if it needs to and content grows longer than the viewport page display. It will not break out of the body dimensions. And it does allow scrolling as needed. overflow-y:scroll allows you to add an empty scrollbar to the right of the page content by default in every web browser. The scrollbar only appear inside the scroll bar area if content extends beyond 100% height of the viewport. This allows your page width, and any margins or paddings to be calculated by the browser beforehand and stop the pages from shifting as users view pages that scroll and those that do not. I use this trick often as it sets the page width perfectly for all scenarios and your web pages will never shift and load lightning fast!
I believe height:auto is the default on body in most UA browser style sheets. So understand most browsers default to that value, anyway.
Adding min-height:100% gives you the default height you want body to have and then allows the page dimensions to fill the viewport without content breaking out of the body. This works only because html has derived its 100% height based on the viewport.
The two CRITICAL pieces here are not the units, like % or vh, but making sure the root element, or html, is set to 100% of the viewport height. Second, its important that body have a min-height:100% or min-height:100vh so it starts out filling the viewport height, whatever that may be. Nothing else beyond that is needed.
STYLING HEIGHT FOR LEGACY BROWSERS
Notice I have added "fallback" properties for height and min-height, as many browsers pre-2010 do not support "vh" viewport units. It's fun to pretend everyone in the web world uses the latest and greatest but the reality is many legacy browsers are still around today in big corporate networks and many still use antiquated browsers that do not understand those new units. One of the things we forget is many very old browsers do not know how to fill the the viewport height correctly. Sadly, those legacy browsers simply had to have height:100% on both the html element and the body as by default they both collapsed height by default. If you did not do that, browser background colors and other weird visuals would flow up under content that did not fill the viewport. The example above should solve all that for you and still work in newer browsers.
Before modern HTML5 browsers (post-2010) we solved that by simply setting height:100% on both the html and body selectors, or just min-height:100% on the body. So either solution allows the code above to work in over 20+ years of legacy web browsers rather than a few created the past couple of years. In old Netscape 4 series or IE 4-5, using min-height:100% instead of height:100% on the body selector could still cause height to collapse in those very old browsers and cause text to overflow background colors. But that would be the one issue I could see with this solution.
Using my CSS solution, you now allow your website to be viewed correctly in 99.99% of browsers, past and present rather than just 60%-80% of browsers built the past few years.
Good Luck!

Try
<html style="width:100%; height:100%; margin: 0; padding: 0;">
<body style="overflow:hidden; width:100%; height:100%; margin:0; padding:0;">

Please check this:
* {margin: 0; padding: 0;}
html, body { width: 100%; height: 100%;}
Or try new method Viewport height :
html, body { width: 100vw; height: 100vh;}
Viewport:
If your using viewport means whatever size screen content will come full height fo the screen.

If you don't want the work of editing your own CSS file and define the height rules by yourself, the most typical CSS frameworks also solve this issue with the body element filling the entirety of the page, among other issues, at ease with multiple sizes of viewports.
For example, Tacit CSS framework solves this issue out of the box, where you don't need to define any CSS rules and classes and you just include the CSS file in your HTML.

html {
background: url(images/bg.jpg) no-repeat center center fixed;
-webkit-background-size: cover;
-moz-background-size: cover;
-o-background-size: cover;
background-size: cover;
min-height: 100%;
}
html body {
min-height: 100%
}
Works for all major browsers: FF, Chrome, Opera, IE9+. Works with Background images and gradients. Scrollbars are available as content needs.

For the true purists, this one respects the default margins of the browser, and prevents the undesired scroll generated by the other methods, besides growing if the content grows. Tested in Chrome, Safari and Firefox. The backgrounds are just for show...
html {
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
height: 100%;
background: red;
}
body {
flex:1;
background: green;
}

Only with 1 line of CSS… You can get this done.
body{ height: 100vh; }

all answers are 100% correct and well explained,
but i did something good and very simple to make it responsive.
here the element will take 100% height of view port but when it comes to mobile view it don't look good specially on portrait view ( mobile ), so when view port is getting smaller the element will collapse and overlap on each other. so to make it little responsive here is code.
hope someone will get help from this.
<style>
.img_wrap{
width:100%;
background: #777;
}
.img_wrap img{
display: block;
width: 100px;
height: 100px;
padding: 50px 0px;
margin: 0 auto;
}
.img_wrap img:nth-child(2){
padding-top: 0;
}
</style>
<div class="img_wrap">
<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/84/fc/7184fc63db0516a00e7d86900d957925.jpg" alt="">
<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/84/fc/7184fc63db0516a00e7d86900d957925.jpg" alt="">
</div>
<script>
var windowHeight = $(window).height();
var elementHeight = $('.img_wrap').height();
if( elementHeight > windowHeight ){
$('.img_wrap').css({height:elementHeight});
}else{
$('.img_wrap').css({height:windowHeight});
}
</script>
here is JSfiddle Demo.

I style the div container - usually the sole child of the body with the following css
.body-container {
position: fixed;
left: 0;
right: 0;
top: 0;
bottom: 0;
height: 100%;
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
overflow-y: auto;
}

Over 20 answers later and none seem to have mentioned the factor that I found was the most crucial - the markup.
After trying basically every answer in this question and a few others, I restructured my markup to something like the following:
<body>
<div class="section1">
<nav>
</nav>
...
</div>
<div class="section2">
</div>
</body>
Essentially, it requires two different outer containers. The first container is for the purpose of containing the navbar and extending the background colour/image all the way to the height of the browser, and the second one for containing everything "below the fold" - including the second background colour/image.
This solution allows the first container's background to expand all the way to the bottom while keeping the second container free to take up as much space as it needs.
From this point on, the only CSS needed to get the result both I and the original question wanted is the following:
body {
height: 100%;
}
.section1 {
height: 100%;
background: black; /* for demo purposes */
}
.section2 {
background: white; /* for demo purposes */
}

Here Update
html
{
height:100%;
}
body{
min-height: 100%;
position:absolute;
margin:0;
padding:0;
}

About the extra space at the bottom: is your page an ASP.NET application? If so, there is probably a wrapping almost everything in your markup. Don't forget to style the form as well. Adding overflow:hidden; to the form might remove the extra space at the bottom.

CSS3 has a new method.
height:100vh
It makes ViewPort 100% equal to the height.
So your Code should be
body{
height:100vh;
}

CSS Class will not gain height

I have tried multiple options and narrowed it down to a specific class but I cannot seem to figure it out.
Im trying to get "#content-wrapper" to increase height but it seems to be stuck at the browsers height.
This has been pissing me off for the past 3 hours.
#content-wrapper {
width: 100%;
max-width: 1000px;
height: 100%;
min-height: 100%;
margin: auto;
position: relative;
}
JSFiddle Link: http://jsfiddle.net/8hn7uLqr/
If anyone can help me please I will be very grateful, I hope everyone is having a good Christmas Eve!

Delete height:100% in the css for the #wrapper and #content-wrapper. It this case it means the height of your browser without scrolling. Give the height a number of pixels or let the height depend on the content within with height:auto.

So if I understand you correctly, you're not sure why your content shows a height of 703px when it's actually in the 9000's. There are 2 issues here.
is the use of height: 100%. Many people think that means 100% of the content but it's actually 100% of the current screen size unless you set html to be height: 100% as well. You can use min-height: 100% which will allow it to extend past the screen height.
The biggest issue you are having is because of the constant use of position: absolute. I'm not sure if you are aware but using absolute positioning removes the element from the flow of the document. Meaning it no longer adheres to it's parents constrains.
After I removed the multiple position: absolute and the height: 100% you can see form the following screenshot the height is adjusted to the content:
So really you need alot of CSS overhaul to set this up without absolute: position

min-height|height html, body acting strange

I'm working on a website that have pages that exceed 100% browser window height and ones that do not. So, what I need is the height to be at least 100% but higher if applicable.
My current CSS looks like:
html, body {
min-height: 100%;
height: auto;
}
This initially seemed to work fine but then I realized that <body> does NOT have the same height as <html> but rather seems to use the standard height. It is like <body> does NOT respect the min-height property.
Hopefully, someone can toss some ideas or shine some light on this.
UPDATE1 It seems like HTML is acting as if it was default too..
UPDATE2 http://jsfiddle.net/rpz4rd4c/5
UPDATE3 According to the suggested comment by ( MichaelHarvey ) the body height is relative to the html height ( not min-height ) if that was true the following code should work:
html {
min-height: 100%;
height: auto;
}
body {
height: 100%;
}
However, it doesn't.
FINAL UPDATE
The solutions provided on this page "work" however they might be buggy with JS plugins. I would recommend people to use 100vh solution or the one I accepted as answer ( mainly because it requires no CSS3 ). I guess a 100% accurate solution to a problem like mine (having all dividers and elements 100% non-related to browser window) would be to simply use inline CSS and use min-height at longer pages and a height at browser fitting ones. This might require some JS.
<3

This seems to work with Chrome:
html {
height: 100%;
}
body {
min-height: 100%;
height: auto;
}
http://jsfiddle.net/rpz4rd4c/10/
Of course, this means the html element never takes the full child's height (only the viewports). Hopefully that's not an issue.

Viewport units to the rescue! The vh unit in CSS works relative to viewport height regardless of parent elements and all that fuss. Here's the CSS you should put on the body:
body{
min-height:100vh;
margin:0;
}
See http://jsfiddle.net/rpz4rd4c/3/ for my working example
EDIT: for your other elements that also need to be at least 100% height, just add min-height:100vh to their CSS styling as well. Thanks #misterManSam!

Without really understanding the why, perhaps this is what you're looking for?
html:
<html>
<body>
<div class='wrapper'>
<div class='inner'>
<!-- your content here -->
</div>
</div>
</body>
<html>
css:
html,body{
height:100%;
overflow:hidden;
}
.wrapper{
height:100%;
overflow:scroll;
background:#f9f9f9;
}
The html and body are always 100% height, and no matter what the content length it will still scroll. Not sure on the side effects of locking the html/body scrolling (lots of potential issues) however, so I'd be wary.
Example: http://codepen.io/jessekernaghan/pen/GocHg

height:100% overfills the content

I have a page with a header (with dynamic height!) and a content. The content should fill out the rest of the page - even if it has not enough text in it.
So far it's a question which is asked many times and is always answerd with something like code I've tried:
html, body {
height: 100%;
}
.header {
height: 50px;
background-color: #ff0;
}
.content {
min-height: 100%;
background-color: #ccc;
}
my problem is that with this code the height of the .content does not just fill out the rest of the page but it has something like the screen size as height. However with this code I have to scroll to see the bottom of the .content.
the code: http://jsbin.com/bilux/1/edit
At the moment there appears a scroll bar when I set the .content height to 100%:
edit:
thanks for the ways to solve that for a static header height! But isn't there a way to do that without knowing the height of my header?

You can use the calc function like this:
.content {
min-height: calc(100% - 50px);
background-color: #ccc;
}
Also note that the default margin of body may make unexpected result, you should also reset it to zero.
Working demo.
UPDATE: If you want it more dynamic, I'm sure you can try using flex-box layout, but it's still not supported widely (just the latest versions of the most modern browsers. For older browsers you should add libraries like prefixfree). Another solution is you can try using table-layout for the header like in this updated demo.

You're using 100% of the page, while other elements use up some of that space. Trim down your percentage based on the space used. For example, on my website it needs 92%
The WIDTH and HEIGHT element is based on the BODY of the page (which is based on the HTML of the page), and not the space it has available. So 100% is 100% of the on-screen space. While other elements on the page may use 10% of that space, and push the content to 110%.
It's the same concept when your page fills with content, and you get a scrollbar. The height of the body is growing based on the height of the content areas container holding the growing content.

absolute positioning might be the answer. Depends on the structure of your entire page. Check it out http://jsbin.com/qeveroci/1/edit

Make body have 100% of the browser height

I want to make body have 100% of the browser height. Can I do that using CSS?
I tried setting height: 100%, but it doesn't work.
I want to set a background color for a page to fill the entire browser window, but if the page has little content I get a ugly white bar at the bottom.

Try setting the height of the html element to 100% as well.
html,
body {
height: 100%;
}
Body looks to its parent (HTML) for how to scale the dynamic property, so the HTML element needs to have its height set as well.
However the content of body will probably need to change dynamically.
Setting min-height to 100% will accomplish this goal.
html {
height: 100%;
}
body {
min-height: 100%;
}

As an alternative to setting both the html and body element's heights to 100%, you could also use viewport-percentage lengths.
5.1.2. Viewport-percentage lengths: the ‘vw’, ‘vh’, ‘vmin’, ‘vmax’ units
The viewport-percentage lengths are relative to the size of the initial containing block. When the height or width of the initial containing block is changed, they are scaled accordingly.
In this instance, you could use the value 100vh - which is the height of the viewport.
Example Here
body {
height: 100vh;
padding: 0;
}
body {
min-height: 100vh;
padding: 0;
}
This is supported in most modern browsers - support can be found here.

If you have a background image then you will want to set this instead:
html{
height: 100%;
}
body {
min-height: 100%;
}
This ensures that your body tag is allowed to continue growing when the content is taller than the viewport and that the background image continues to repeat/scroll/whatever when you start scrolling down.
Remember if you have to support IE6 you will need to find a way to wedge in height:100% for body, IE6 treats height like min-height anyway.

If you want to keep the margins on the body and don't want scroll bars, use the following css:
html { height:100%; }
body { position:absolute; top:0; bottom:0; right:0; left:0; }
Setting body {min-height:100%} will give you scroll bars.
See demo at http://jsbin.com/aCaDahEK/2/edit?html,output .

After testing various scenarios, I believe this is the best solution:
html {
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
display: table;
}
body {
width: 100%;
display: table-cell;
}
html, body {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
It is dynamic in that the html and the body elements will expand automatically if their contents overflow. I tested this in the latest version of Firefox, Chrome, and IE 11.
See the full fiddle here (for you table haters out there, you can always change it to use a div):
https://jsfiddle.net/71yp4rh1/9/
With that being said, there are several issues with the answers posted here.
html, body {
height: 100%;
}
Using the above CSS will cause the html and the body element to NOT automatically expand if their contents overflow as shown here:
https://jsfiddle.net/9vyy620m/4/
As you scroll, notice the repeating background? This is happening because the body element's height has NOT increased due to its child table overflowing. Why doesn't it expand like any other block element? I'm not sure. I think browsers handle this incorrectly.
html {
height: 100%;
}
body {
min-height: 100%;
}
Setting a min-height of 100% on the body as shown above causes other problems. If you do this, you cannot specify that a child div or table take up a percentage height as shown here:
https://jsfiddle.net/aq74v2v7/4/
Hope this helps someone. I think browsers are handling this incorrectly. I would expect the body's height to automatically adjust growing larger if its children overflow. However, that doesn't seem to happen when you use 100% height and 100% width.

html, body
{
height: 100%;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}

A quick update
html, body{
min-height:100%;
overflow:auto;
}
A better solution with today's CSS
html, body{
min-height: 100vh;
overflow: auto;
}

What I use on the start of literally every CSS file I use is the following:
html, body{
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
min-width: 100%;
width: 100%;
max-width: 100%;
min-height: 100%;
height: 100%;
max-height: 100%;
}
The margin of 0 ensures that the HTML and BODY elements aren't being auto-positioned by the browser to have some space to the left or right of them.
The padding of 0 ensures that the HTML and BODY elements aren't automatically pushing everything inside them down or right because of browser defaults.
The width and height variants are set to 100% to ensure that the browser doesn't resize them in anticipation of actually having an auto-set margin or padding, with min and max set just in case some weird, unexplainable stuff happens, though you probably dont need them.
This solution also means that, like I did when I first started on HTML and CSS several years ago, you won't have to give your first <div> a margin:-8px; to make it fit in the corner of the browser window.
Before I posted, I looked at my other fullscreen CSS project and found that all I used there was just body{margin:0;} and nothing else, which has worked fine over the 2 years I've been working on it.
Hope this detailed answer helps, and I feel your pain. In my eyes, it is dumb that browsers should set an invisible boundary on the left and sometimes top side of the body/html elements.

Here:
html,body{
height:100%;
}
body{
margin:0;
padding:0
background:blue;
}

You can also use JS if needed
var winHeight = window.innerHeight ||
document.documentElement.clientHeight ||
document.body.clientHeight;
var pageHeight = $('body').height();
if (pageHeight < winHeight) {
$('.main-content,').css('min-height',winHeight)
}

I would use this
html, body{
background: #E73;
min-height: 100%;
min-height: 100vh;
overflow: auto; // <- this is needed when you resize the screen
}
<html>
<body>
</body>
</html>
The browser will use min-height: 100vh and if somehow the browser is a little older the min-height: 100% will be the fallback.
The overflow: auto is necessary if you want the body and html to expand their height when you resize the screen (to a mobile size for example)

Try
<html style="width:100%; height:100%; margin: 0; padding: 0;">
<body style="overflow:hidden; width:100%; height:100%; margin:0; padding:0;">

Please check this:
* {margin: 0; padding: 0;}
html, body { width: 100%; height: 100%;}
Or try new method Viewport height :
html, body { width: 100vw; height: 100vh;}
Viewport:
If your using viewport means whatever size screen content will come full height fo the screen.

If you don't want the work of editing your own CSS file and define the height rules by yourself, the most typical CSS frameworks also solve this issue with the body element filling the entirety of the page, among other issues, at ease with multiple sizes of viewports.
For example, Tacit CSS framework solves this issue out of the box, where you don't need to define any CSS rules and classes and you just include the CSS file in your HTML.

html {
background: url(images/bg.jpg) no-repeat center center fixed;
-webkit-background-size: cover;
-moz-background-size: cover;
-o-background-size: cover;
background-size: cover;
min-height: 100%;
}
html body {
min-height: 100%
}
Works for all major browsers: FF, Chrome, Opera, IE9+. Works with Background images and gradients. Scrollbars are available as content needs.

For the true purists, this one respects the default margins of the browser, and prevents the undesired scroll generated by the other methods, besides growing if the content grows. Tested in Chrome, Safari and Firefox. The backgrounds are just for show...
html {
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
height: 100%;
background: red;
}
body {
flex:1;
background: green;
}

Only with 1 line of CSS… You can get this done.
body{ height: 100vh; }

all answers are 100% correct and well explained,
but i did something good and very simple to make it responsive.
here the element will take 100% height of view port but when it comes to mobile view it don't look good specially on portrait view ( mobile ), so when view port is getting smaller the element will collapse and overlap on each other. so to make it little responsive here is code.
hope someone will get help from this.
<style>
.img_wrap{
width:100%;
background: #777;
}
.img_wrap img{
display: block;
width: 100px;
height: 100px;
padding: 50px 0px;
margin: 0 auto;
}
.img_wrap img:nth-child(2){
padding-top: 0;
}
</style>
<div class="img_wrap">
<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/84/fc/7184fc63db0516a00e7d86900d957925.jpg" alt="">
<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/84/fc/7184fc63db0516a00e7d86900d957925.jpg" alt="">
</div>
<script>
var windowHeight = $(window).height();
var elementHeight = $('.img_wrap').height();
if( elementHeight > windowHeight ){
$('.img_wrap').css({height:elementHeight});
}else{
$('.img_wrap').css({height:windowHeight});
}
</script>
here is JSfiddle Demo.

I style the div container - usually the sole child of the body with the following css
.body-container {
position: fixed;
left: 0;
right: 0;
top: 0;
bottom: 0;
height: 100%;
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
overflow-y: auto;
}

Over 20 answers later and none seem to have mentioned the factor that I found was the most crucial - the markup.
After trying basically every answer in this question and a few others, I restructured my markup to something like the following:
<body>
<div class="section1">
<nav>
</nav>
...
</div>
<div class="section2">
</div>
</body>
Essentially, it requires two different outer containers. The first container is for the purpose of containing the navbar and extending the background colour/image all the way to the height of the browser, and the second one for containing everything "below the fold" - including the second background colour/image.
This solution allows the first container's background to expand all the way to the bottom while keeping the second container free to take up as much space as it needs.
From this point on, the only CSS needed to get the result both I and the original question wanted is the following:
body {
height: 100%;
}
.section1 {
height: 100%;
background: black; /* for demo purposes */
}
.section2 {
background: white; /* for demo purposes */
}

Here Update
html
{
height:100%;
}
body{
min-height: 100%;
position:absolute;
margin:0;
padding:0;
}

About the extra space at the bottom: is your page an ASP.NET application? If so, there is probably a wrapping almost everything in your markup. Don't forget to style the form as well. Adding overflow:hidden; to the form might remove the extra space at the bottom.

CSS3 has a new method.
height:100vh
It makes ViewPort 100% equal to the height.
So your Code should be
body{
height:100vh;
}

We Keep Coding

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