How to make content div full height when using padding on wrapper? - html

Question

I know similar questions have been asked numerous times, but I've tried a number of answers and none seem to work for my situation. I've found a lot of solutions for sticky footers, but that's not exactly what I'm looking for, or maybe I haven't figured out how to use correctly for my situation:
I have fully fixed position navigation (header/sidebars/footer). The content flows on top of the header and footer.
My content wrapper layer is currently a 100% width/ 100% min-height
layer above the navigation layer, and using simple padding on top/bottom and margins on left/right, I'm able to show the navigation elements.
Inside the wrapper layer I have my content div, which has my page
background and a box-shadow. But I can't get the content div to
expand to the full height of the wrapper, because the wrapper height
is based on percentage. So everything works perfectly when I have
content that fills or overflows the window, but when I don't, the content div is too small.
Sticky footer doesn't work in this situation because the sticky footer just covers the content (the content itself is still 100% height). I basically want the content to be min-height 100% - minus the 50px header and 50px footer.
Is there any css solution to this without using a javascript hack or calc()?
I would be willing to have the header + footer not be fix positioned - but I want to keep the box-shadow on the content div (i.e. 50px from top and bottom of the page).
JSFiddle:
https://jsfiddle.net/tyhenry/n9rpbj3m/5/
HTML:
<div id="nav">
<div id="header">
header
</div>
<div id="left-side">
left sidebar
</div>
<div id="right-side">
right sidebar
</div>
<div id="footer">
footer
</div>
</div>
<div id="page-layer">
<div class="page">
content<br>
content<br>
content<br>
</div>
</div>
CSS:
* {
box-sizing: border-box;
}
html, body{
background-color: #eeffff;
text-align: center;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
height: 100%;
}
#header {
position: fixed;
top:0;
left:0;
width: 100%;
height: 50px;
background-color: #ddd;
}
#left-side {
background-color: #bbb;
position: fixed;
left: 0;
top: 50px;
width: 50px;
height: 100%;
}
#right-side {
background-color: #bbb;
position: fixed;
right: 0;
top: 50px;
width: 50px;
height: 100%;
overflow: hidden;
}
#footer {
position: fixed;
bottom: 0;
left: 0;
width: 100%;
height: 50px;
background-color: #aaa;
}
#page-layer{
position:relative;
padding: 50px 0 50px 0;
margin: 0 50px 0 50px;
min-height: 100%;
}
.page {
background-color: #fff;
box-shadow: 0px 1px 20px 0px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8);
width:100%;
}

Answer 1

If you change the display property to flex it fills the whole (height between header and footer) and adjusts when you resize.
#page-layout {
display: flex;
}

Answer 2

give this you the desirable outcome ? can i use viewport units
add:
.page {
min-height: 100vh; /*min-height not height :)*/
}

Answer 3

Try this updated fiddle https://jsfiddle.net/n9rpbj3m/6/
#page-layer{
position:absolute;
top:50px;
left:50px;
right:50px;
bottom:50px;
}
.page {
position:relative;
background-color: #fff;
box-shadow: 0px 1px 20px 0px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8);
height:auto;
min-height: 100%;
width:100%;
}