How make a div container responsive? - html

Question

I have a div with a background-image assigned in the CSS3 file.
The image is responsive, so it scales according to the screen size BUT the container keeps the height at all screen sizes.
I need to know if there is a way to make the container responsive as well as the background image.
HTML:
<div class="responsive> </div>
CSS3:
.responsive {
background: url('https://s20.postimg.org/o09gf7fvx/bag.jpg') no-repeat center top;
border: 1px solid red;
background-size: contain;
width: 100%;
height: 270px;
}
I must use background-image selector and no img src tag.
Here is the fiddle file.
Thank you.

Answer 1

Update - February 3rd, 2021
Since I wrote the original answer a new CSS property has been introduced - 'aspect-ratio' - to solve this problem.
<div id="responsive">some text</div>
CSS:
#container {
width: 100%;
background: hotpink;
aspect-ratio: 100 / 29;
}
At the time of writing this CSS property doesn't yet have widespread browser support.
Working Example: https://jsfiddle.net/fu0nL57t/
Ref: https://web.dev/aspect-ratio/
=====================================================
Original Answer
This can be done an additional dummy element, inside the element you want to keep at a fixed ratio. If you specify a padding-top or padding-bottom as a percentage, that is in terms of the width of the container element, and this then keeps the height of the container element at a fixed ratio.
<div id="responsive">
some text
<div id="dummy"></div>
</div>
CSS:
#responsive {
display: inline-block;
position: relative;
width: 100%;
background: url('https://s20.postimg.org/o09gf7fvx/bag.jpg') no-repeat center top;
background-size: contain;
}
#dummy {
padding-top: 29%;
}
Working Example:
https://jsfiddle.net/098jj61q/
Credits:
http://ansciath.tumblr.com/post/7347495869/css-aspect-ratio
http://alistapart.com/article/creating-intrinsic-ratios-for-video

Answer 2

Yes its correct. According to #Paulie_D, you can't do that with background image.As per your requirement you can do that using img tag only.
What you have to do, without using the div just make the image responsive by treating it as a block element as,
.img-responsive {
display: block;
max-width: 100%;
height: auto;
}
or if you insist to use division with background image then cover the backgound image and set min-height as,
div.mydiv {
background:url(background_image.jpg);
background-repeat:no-repeat !important;
background-size: cover !important;
background-position:center center !important;
min-height:300px;
}