I am having little trouble making the background image responsive. It works fine in the desktop.
body {
background:url(../Images/mountain.jpg) no-repeat;
background-size:cover;
}
This is fine when I don't care for responsiveness, perfectly fit to the window. But,
as I make window smaller the width is maintained perfect but the height of image is shrinking and I get awkward white background.
Then to solve that I added this,
height:100vh;
This was nice, my image height was perfectly aligned to window as I made smaller. Though image is also perfectly aligned for desktop and mobile, I am losing the image as I make window smaller. It is being cropped.
What should I do? Is media queries the only solution? What can I do except media queries with different images?
You can use the background-size property. Its accepted values are:
contain : Scales the image as large as possible within its container without cropping or stretching the image
cover : Scales the image as large as possible to fill the container, stretching the image if necessary
Of course it cannot stretch outside of the container (for example if the body element does not take the entire page, you might wanna add min-height: 100vh; for that)
On Apple.com, their homepage, underneath the slides, you see 4 clickable posts/images and when you scale the browser window(or use a phone or tablet), they scale according.
Is their a plugin for Wordpress that mimics this type of behavior or HTML code?
Where you can have 4 images to scale to the UI, simple HTML code?
I know there are plugins that do this with latest posts but its not what I want. Thank you in advance.
Example image
They are using the background-size attribute. What that does is ensure the image is contained within the parent element and scaled up or down to ensure that it's at 100% width and height but still within the parent container.
It accepts a couple of properties. Here is the table of browser support.
background-size: contain;
Contains the image within the parent element and does not overflow.
background-size: cover;
Ensures the background image covers the full width and height of the element it is applied to. It won't skew the aspect ratio, it will simply overflow the element to the right size to maintain the aspect ratio.
Also, just to note, you can use pixels and media queries to explicitly set the image width/height ratio. This would look like this and goes in the order of width then height and if you use one value instead of two, that will also work.
background-size: 250px 150px;
Note that the background image is contained to the element it is applied to regardless. So even though it technically overflows when using cover, it doesn't visually spill over the element so it doesn't look messy.
I have an issue with css. I have to fit an image of variable size to a div with 100% width and 96vh. Also it should look good on resizing of the browser. I tried some tricks, but the result isn't good at all. Here is an example: http://dev.tourday.co/tour/Test-Emir-tour/45. The image looks really zoomed in on a 1366x768 resolution.
In this case I would like to get the result like when its completely zoomed out (something like this http://pokit.org/get/img/4445922ec2a29994b530d45759003d67.jpg).
I'm okay with the sides being cut out a bit because the aspect ratio of the picture is different than the div's, but I'd really like to avoid stretching.
Tried messing around with width:100%, and height:100%, but then stretching accours. What am I missing here?
if you define the image as a background image for its container, you can use background-size: cover . This will cut off some parts (depending on the window proportions), but fill the whole container and not distort the image proportions. Adding background-position: centermakes sure the middle part is always shown.
Visually I can appreciate the difference, but in which situations should I prefer one over the other?
Is there any point using them at all or can they be replaced by percentages?
Currently I don't seem to be able to go beyond a trial-error approach when using these properties, which does my head in.
Also I can only find pretty vague explanations and especially I find the W3C doc quite baffling.
Values have the following meanings:
‘contain’
Scale the image, while preserving its intrinsic aspect ratio
(if any), to the largest size such that both its width and its height
can fit inside the background positioning area.
‘cover’
Scale the image, while preserving its intrinsic aspect ratio (if any), to the
smallest size such that both its width and its height can completely
cover the background positioning area.
I'm probably being a bit thick, but can anyone give me a plain English explanation with relative examples?
Please use this fiddle. Thanks.
CSS
body{
width:500px;
height:500px;
background:url(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Bachalpseeflowers.jpg);
background-size:contain;
background-repeat:no-repeat;
}
Note
The accepted answer is the one I currently find the most concise and complete.
Thanks everybody for their help.
You can consider looking at the pseudocodes that govern the output. The values allotted to the image's size depend directly on the aspect ratios of container wrt aspect ratio of the background image.
Note: Aspect ratio = width / height
Contain
if (aspect ratio of container > aspect ratio of image)
image-height = container-height
image-width = aspect-ratio-preserved width
else
image-width = container width
image-height = aspect-ratio-preserved height
Cover
if (aspect ratio of container > aspect ratio of image)
image-width = container width
image-height = aspect-ratio-preserved height
else
image-height = container height
image-width = aspect-ratio-preserved width
You see the relation? In both cover and contain, aspect ratio is preserved. But the if - else conditions reverse in both the cases.
This is what makes cover to cover full page, without any white portion visible. When aspect ratio of container is greater, scaling image so that its width becomes equal to container width. Now, height will be greater, as aspect ratio is smaller. Thus it covers the whole page without any white portion.
Q. Can they be replaced by percentages?
No, not simply by percentages. You'll need conditioning.
Q. In which situations should I prefer one over the other?
When you are creating a website, you wouldn't want any white portion in the fixed background. So use cover.
contain on the other can be used when you are using a repeating background (e.g. when you have a pattern image with very high aspect ratio wrt veiwport/container you can use contain and set background-repeat to repeat-y). But a more appropriate use for contain would be for a fixed height/width element.
Although the question assumes the reader already understands how the contain and cover values for background-size work, here's a plain-English paraphrasing of what the spec says, which can serve as a quick primer:
background-size: contain ensures that the entire background image will fit the background area, keeping its original aspect ratio. If the background area is smaller than the image, the image will shrink so that it can fit the background area. If the background area is either taller or wider than the image, then any parts of the area not occupied by the main image will either be filled by repetitions of the image, or letterboxes/whitespace if background-repeat is set to no-repeat.
background-size: cover makes the background image as large as possible such that it will fill the entire background area leaving no gaps. The difference between cover and 100% 100% is that the aspect ratio of the image is preserved, so no unnatural stretching of the image occurs.
Note that neither of these two keyword values can be expressed using any combination of lengths, percentages, or auto keywords.
So when do you use one over the other? Personally, I think cover has more practical uses than contain, so I will go with that first.1
background-size: cover
One common use case of background-size: cover is in a full-screen layout where the background image is rich in detail, such as a photo, and you want to feature this image prominently, albeit as a background as opposed to the main content.
You want just enough of the image to be able to completely cover the browser viewport or screen, regardless of the aspect ratio of the viewport, or whether the image or the viewport is in portrait or landscape. You're not concerned if any parts of the image are cropped out as a result of this, as long as the image fills up the entire background area and maintains its original aspect ratio.
Here's an example of a layout where the content is housed in a semitransparent white background, which hovers over a full-screen background. When you increase the height of the preview pane, notice that the image automatically scales up to ensure that it still covers the entire preview area.
html {
height: 100%;
background-image: url(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Bachalpseeflowers.jpg);
background-position: center center;
background-size: cover;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-attachment: fixed;
}
body {
width: 80%;
min-height: 100%;
background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.5);
margin: 5em auto;
padding: 1em;
}
If you use background-size: contain instead, what happens is that the background image shrinks in order for the entire image to fit in the preview pane. This leaves ugly white letterboxes around the image depending on the aspect ratio of the preview pane, which ruins the effect.
background-size: contain
So why would one use background-size: contain if it leaves ugly blank spaces around the image? One use case that immediately comes to mind is if the designer doesn't care about the blank spaces, so long as the entire image fits within the background area.
That may sound contrived, but consider that not every image looks bad with empty space around it. This is where the example of using a logo instead of a photo actually demonstrates this best, even though you probably won't find yourself using a logo as a background image.
A logo is typically an irregular shape sitting on either a blank or completely transparent background. This leaves a canvas that can be filled by a solid color or a different background. Using background-size: contain will ensure that the entire image fits the background without any parts of it being cropped out, but the image still looks right at home on the canvas.
But it doesn't necessarily have to apply to an irregularly-shaped image. It can apply to rectangular images as well. As long as you require that no cropping of the background image occurs, whitespace can either be seen as a reasonable tradeoff, or not a big deal at all. Remember fixed-width layouts? Think of background-size: contain as essentially that, but for background images and in both portrait and landscape orientations: if you can ensure that the content will always fit the boundaries of the background image at all times, then whitespace becomes a non-issue altogether.
Although background-size: contain will work whether or not the image is set to repeat, I can't think of any good use cases involving repeating backgrounds.
1 Note that if you're using a gradient as a background, both contain and cover have no effect because gradients do not have any intrinsic dimensions. In both cases, the gradient will stretch to cover the container, as though you had specified 100% 100%.
background-size:cover will cover the entire div with the image. This could be useful for showing thumbnail images of a main image where the entire image being displayed isn't that important, but you still want to conform to a size for all images. (for example, a blog post excerpt)
background-size:contain will show the entire image within the div. This can be useful if you specifically want to display the entirety of the images, but within a set container div size. (For example, a collection of company logos)
Both keep the image at the same aspect ratio
http://cdn.onextrapixel.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/cover-contain.jpg
background-size:contain;
When using contain you may still see white-spacing, due to the way that it sizes and contains itself within the element.
background-size:cover;
will completely cover said element, you will not see any white-spacing
source:
http://www.css3.info/preview/background-size/
see example H
edit: use background-size:contain if:
You want it so that your image is always displayed in the viewport. Please note that: while you can see the full image, it will leave white spacing either on the top or bottom of the image whenever the aspect ratio of the browser and window are not the same.
use background-size:cover if:
You want a background-image, but you don't want the negative effect of the white-spacing which contain does have, please note that: when using background-size:cover; you may experience that it will cut off some of the image.
source: http://alistapart.com/article/supersize-that-background-please
Contain:- Scale the image to the largest size such that both its width and its height can fit inside the content area.
Exmaple:
Cover:-Scale the background image to be as large as possible so that the background area is completely covered by the background image. Some parts of the background image may not be in view within the background positioning area.
Example:
We had a huge conversation about cover vs contain just want to share this thoughts:
landscape image on landscape screen - best to use cover
portrait image on landscape screen - best to use contain
portrait image on landscape screen - best to use contain
portrait image on landscape screen - best to use contain
Illustration:
if(iDonPutSomeCode) const result = iCantPasteLinkToCodePen
https://codepen.io/Kinosura/pen/EGZbdy?editors=1100
I am trying to create a completely fluid layout in CSS (everything in %), which would work seamlessly across platforms (desktop/mobile/tablets like iPad).
With Fluid Layouts, can an image be made completely fluid? For example:
img { max-width:100%; }
Does this mean it will adjust/fit to any extent or window size?
Also can this be applied to background images as well ?
Does this property have any limitations in terms of browser implementation or anything ?
The snippet you provide says that the maximum width for the image is 100%. This could mean no wider than the browser window or device viewport. It could also mean no wider than a relatively postitioned parent node. But, if the window is big enough, the image will render at it's native size.
It can't be applied to background images, because the background image itself is tiled or positioned based on it's original size. The max-width trick is mostly useful for content images, not so much layout or styling images.
It is limited, in that IE6 doesn't support it at all. However, that market is rather small and shrinking, so maybe you can ignore that issue.
Your code means the size of the image relative to it's parent's width. So lets say the div that the image is in is 500px wide, then the image may be a maximum of 500px wide, or smaller, not larger. for more info on max-width: W3.org max-width
For backgrounds this works a little different, you can use background-size: x y; for this. It's CSS3 and is not supported by older browsers. for more info on background-size: W3.org background-size