Link two HTML divs' dimensions to each other?

Link two HTML divs' dimensions to each other? - javascript

If I have div A and div B, is there a way to say A.width = b.width = MAX(a.width, b.width) ? That is, whichever has the largest inner content would dictate how large both are.
The actual problem I'm trying to solve is with columns - left, middle, and right. I want the left and right to be the same fixed width (but this could vary depending on their content).

It is not possible to use CSS to achieve this. However, if there is a way to do it with a JS-based solution. Here I am using jQuery. Let's say you have two divs, with classes a and b respectively.
$(function() {
function equalizeSize($ele) {
if($ele.length > 1) {
// Let CSS automatically calculate natural width first
$ele.css({ width: 'auto' });
// And then we fetch the newly calculated widths
var maxWidth = Math.max.apply(Math, $ele.map(function(){ return $(this).outerWidth(); }).get());
$ele.css({ width: maxWidth });
}
}
// Run when DOM is ready
equalizeSize($('.a, .b'));
// Run again when viewport has been resized, which **may** affect your div width.
// This is optional, but good to have
// ps: You might want to look into throttling the resize function
$(window).resize(equalizeSize($('.a, .b')));
});
See proof-of-concept fiddle here: http://jsfiddle.net/teddyrised/N4MMg/
The advantages of this simple function:
Allows you to dictate what elements you want to equalize widths with.
Uses the .map() function to construct an array, which we then use Math.max.apply to get the maximum value in the array
Forces automatic calculation of width when the function first fires (especially when resizing the viewport)
Allows you to call to recalculate the size again, using the handler equalizeSize() when you change the content in the divs... you can call the function again, say, after an AJAX call that appends content to either element.

It is not very clear what you want from the description. but I can rewrite your code this way.
var properWidth = Math.max($("#a").width(), $("#b").width());
$("#a").css("width", properWidth + "px");
$("#b").css("width", properWidth + "px");
I am not sure if it is this kind of solution you want.

I'm not sure there is a way to do it like that. But why not make a default function to set the size:
function changeSize(w, h)
{
A.setAttribute('style', 'width:'+w+'; height:'+h);
b.setAttribute('style', 'width:'+w+'; height:'+h);
}
Working fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/kychan/ER2zZ/

Related

How to obtain effective iframe height [duplicate]

How do you get the rendered height of an element?
Let's say you have a <div> element with some content inside. This content inside is going to stretch the height of the <div>. How do you get the "rendered" height when you haven't explicitly set the height. Obviously, I tried:
var h = document.getElementById('someDiv').style.height;
Is there a trick for doing this? I am using jQuery if that helps.

Try one of:
var h = document.getElementById('someDiv').clientHeight;
var h = document.getElementById('someDiv').offsetHeight;
var h = document.getElementById('someDiv').scrollHeight;
clientHeight includes the height and vertical padding.
offsetHeight includes the height, vertical padding, and vertical borders.
scrollHeight includes the height of the contained document (would be greater than just height in case of scrolling), vertical padding, and vertical borders.

It should just be
$('#someDiv').height();
with jQuery. This retrieves the height of the first item in the wrapped set as a number.
Trying to use
.style.height
only works if you have set the property in the first place. Not very useful!

NON JQUERY since there were a bunch of links using elem.style.height in the top of these answers...
INNER HEIGHT:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Element.clientHeight
document.getElementById(id_attribute_value).clientHeight;
OUTER HEIGHT:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLElement.offsetHeight
document.getElementById(id_attribute_value).offsetHeight;
Or one of my favorite references: http://youmightnotneedjquery.com/

I use this to get the height of an element (returns float):
document.getElementById('someDiv').getBoundingClientRect().height
It also works when you use the virtual DOM. I use it in Vue like this:
this.$refs['some-ref'].getBoundingClientRect().height
For a Vue component:
this.$refs['some-ref'].$el.getBoundingClientRect().height

You can use .outerHeight() for this purpose.
It will give you full rendered height of the element. Also, you don't need to set any css-height of the element. For precaution you can keep its height auto so it can be rendered as per content's height.
//if you need height of div excluding margin/padding/border
$('#someDiv').height();
//if you need height of div with padding but without border + margin
$('#someDiv').innerHeight();
// if you need height of div including padding and border
$('#someDiv').outerHeight();
//and at last for including border + margin + padding, can use
$('#someDiv').outerHeight(true);
For a clear view of these function you can go for jQuery's site or a detailed post here.
it will clear the difference between .height() / innerHeight() / outerHeight()

style = window.getComputedStyle(your_element);
then simply: style.height

Definitely use
$('#someDiv').height() // to read it
or
$('#someDiv').height(newHeight) // to set it
I'm posting this as an additional answer because theres a couple important things I just learnt.
I almost fell into the trap just now of using offsetHeight. This is what happened :
I used the good old trick of using a debugger to 'watch' what properties my element has
I saw which one has a value around the value I was expecting
It was offsetHeight - so I used that.
Then i realized it didnt work with a hidden DIV
I tried hiding after calculating maxHeight but that looked clumsy - got in a mess.
I did a search - discovered jQuery.height() - and used it
found out height() works even on hidden elements
just for fun I checked the jQuery implementation of height/width
Here's just a portion of it :
Math.max(
Math.max(document.body["scroll" + name], document.documentElement["scroll" + name]),
Math.max(document.body["offset" + name], document.documentElement["offset" + name])
)
Yup it looks at BOTH scroll and offset. If that fails it looks even further, taking into account browser and css compatibility issues. In other words STUFF I DONT CARE ABOUT - or want to.
But I dont have to. Thanks jQuery!
Moral of the story : if jQuery has a method for something its probably for a good reason, likely related to compatibilty.
If you haven't read through the jQuery list of methods recently I suggest you take a look.

I think the best way to do this in 2020 is to use vanilla js and getBoundingClientRect().height;
Here's an example
let div = document.querySelector('div');
let divHeight = div.getBoundingClientRect().height;
console.log(`Div Height: ${divHeight}`);
<div>
How high am I? 🥴
</div>
On top of getting height this way, we also have access to a bunch of other stuff about the div.
let div = document.querySelector('div');
let divInfo = div.getBoundingClientRect();
console.log(divInfo);
<div>What else am I? 🥴</div>

I made a simple code that doesn't even need JQuery and probably gonna help some people.
It gets the total height of 'ID1' after loaded and use it on 'ID2'
function anyName(){
var varname=document.getElementById('ID1').offsetHeight;
document.getElementById('ID2').style.height=varname+'px';
}
Then just set the body to load it
<body onload='anyName()'>

document.querySelector('.project_list_div').offsetHeight;

Hm we can get the Element geometry...
var geometry;
geometry={};
var element=document.getElementById(#ibims);
var rect = element.getBoundingClientRect();
this.geometry.top=rect.top;
this.geometry.right=rect.right;
this.geometry.bottom=rect.bottom;
this.geometry.left=rect.left;
this.geometry.height=this.geometry.bottom-this.geometry.top;
this.geometry.width=this.geometry.right-this.geometry.left;
console.log(this.geometry);
How about this plain JS ?

So is this the answer?
"If you need to calculate something but not show it, set the element to visibility:hidden and position:absolute, add it to the DOM tree, get the offsetHeight, and remove it. (That's what the prototype library does behind the lines last time I checked)."
I have the same problem on a number of elements. There is no jQuery or Prototype to be used on the site but I'm all in favor of borrowing the technique if it works. As an example of some things that failed to work, followed by what did, I have the following code:
// Layout Height Get
function fnElementHeightMaxGet(DoScroll, DoBase, elementPassed, elementHeightDefault)
{
var DoOffset = true;
if (!elementPassed) { return 0; }
if (!elementPassed.style) { return 0; }
var thisHeight = 0;
var heightBase = parseInt(elementPassed.style.height);
var heightOffset = parseInt(elementPassed.offsetHeight);
var heightScroll = parseInt(elementPassed.scrollHeight);
var heightClient = parseInt(elementPassed.clientHeight);
var heightNode = 0;
var heightRects = 0;
//
if (DoBase) {
if (heightBase > thisHeight) { thisHeight = heightBase; }
}
if (DoOffset) {
if (heightOffset > thisHeight) { thisHeight = heightOffset; }
}
if (DoScroll) {
if (heightScroll > thisHeight) { thisHeight = heightScroll; }
}
//
if (thisHeight == 0) { thisHeight = heightClient; }
//
if (thisHeight == 0) {
// Dom Add:
// all else failed so use the protype approach...
var elBodyTempContainer = document.getElementById('BodyTempContainer');
elBodyTempContainer.appendChild(elementPassed);
heightNode = elBodyTempContainer.childNodes[0].offsetHeight;
elBodyTempContainer.removeChild(elementPassed);
if (heightNode > thisHeight) { thisHeight = heightNode; }
//
// Bounding Rect:
// Or this approach...
var clientRects = elementPassed.getClientRects();
heightRects = clientRects.height;
if (heightRects > thisHeight) { thisHeight = heightRects; }
}
//
// Default height not appropriate here
// if (thisHeight == 0) { thisHeight = elementHeightDefault; }
if (thisHeight > 3000) {
// ERROR
thisHeight = 3000;
}
return thisHeight;
}
which basically tries anything and everything only to get a zero result. ClientHeight with no affect. With the problem elements I typically get NaN in the Base and zero in the Offset and Scroll heights. I then tried the Add DOM solution and clientRects to see if it works here.
29 Jun 2011,
I did indeed update the code to try both adding to DOM and clientHeight with better results than I expected.
1) clientHeight was also 0.
2) Dom actually gave me a height which was great.
3) ClientRects returns a result almost identical to the DOM technique.
Because the elements added are fluid in nature, when they are added to an otherwise empty DOM Temp element they are rendered according to the width of that container. This get weird, because that is 30px shorter than it eventually ends up.
I added a few snapshots to illustrate how the height is calculated differently.
The height differences are obvious. I could certainly add absolute positioning and hidden but I am sure that will have no effect. I continued to be convinced this would not work!
(I digress further) The height comes out (renders) lower than the true rendered height. This could be addressed by setting the width of the DOM Temp element to match the existing parent and could be done fairly accurately in theory. I also do not know what would result from removing them and adding them back into their existing location. As they arrived through an innerHTML technique I will be looking using this different approach.
* HOWEVER * None of that was necessary. In fact it worked as advertised and returned the correct height!!!
When I was able to get the menus visible again amazingly DOM had returned the correct height per the fluid layout at the top of the page (279px). The above code also uses getClientRects which return 280px.
This is illustrated in the following snapshot (taken from Chrome once working.)
Now I have noooooo idea why that prototype trick works, but it seems to. Alternatively, getClientRects also works.
I suspect the cause of all this trouble with these particular elements was the use of innerHTML instead of appendChild, but that is pure speculation at this point.

offsetHeight, usually.
If you need to calculate something but not show it, set the element to visibility:hidden and position:absolute, add it to the DOM tree, get the offsetHeight, and remove it. (That's what the prototype library does behind the scenes last time I checked).

Sometimes offsetHeight will return zero because the element you've created has not been rendered in the Dom yet. I wrote this function for such circumstances:
function getHeight(element)
{
var e = element.cloneNode(true);
e.style.visibility = "hidden";
document.body.appendChild(e);
var height = e.offsetHeight + 0;
document.body.removeChild(e);
e.style.visibility = "visible";
return height;
}

If you are using jQuery already, your best bet is .outerHeight() or .height(), as has been stated.
Without jQuery, you can check the box-sizing in use and add up various paddings + borders + clientHeight, or you can use getComputedStyle:
var h = getComputedStyle(document.getElementById('someDiv')).height;
h will now be a string like a "53.825px".
And I can't find the reference, but I think I heard getComputedStyle() can be expensive, so it's probably not something you want to call on each window.onscroll event (but then, neither is jQuery's height()).

With MooTools:
$('someDiv').getSize().y

If i understood your question correctly, then maybe something like this would help:
function testDistance(node1, node2) {
/* get top position of node 1 */
let n1Pos = node1.offsetTop;
/* get height of node 1 */
let n1Height = node1.clientHeight;
/* get top position of node 2 */
let n2Pos = node2.offsetTop;
/* get height of node 2 */
let n2Height = node2.clientHeight;
/* add height of both nodes */
let heightTogether = n1Height + n2Height;
/* calculate distance from top of node 1 to bottom of node 2 */
let actualDistance = (n2Pos + n2Height) - n1Pos;
/* if the distance between top of node 1 and bottom of node 2
is bigger than their heights combined, than there is something between them */
if (actualDistance > heightTogether) {
/* do something here if they are not together */
console.log('they are not together');
} else {
/* do something here if they are together */
console.log('together');
}
}

Have you set the height in the css specifically? If you haven't you need to use offsetHeight; rather than height
var h = document.getElementById('someDiv').style.offsetHeight;

get and set height of element [duplicate]

How do you get the rendered height of an element?
Let's say you have a <div> element with some content inside. This content inside is going to stretch the height of the <div>. How do you get the "rendered" height when you haven't explicitly set the height. Obviously, I tried:
var h = document.getElementById('someDiv').style.height;
Is there a trick for doing this? I am using jQuery if that helps.

Try one of:
var h = document.getElementById('someDiv').clientHeight;
var h = document.getElementById('someDiv').offsetHeight;
var h = document.getElementById('someDiv').scrollHeight;
clientHeight includes the height and vertical padding.
offsetHeight includes the height, vertical padding, and vertical borders.
scrollHeight includes the height of the contained document (would be greater than just height in case of scrolling), vertical padding, and vertical borders.

It should just be
$('#someDiv').height();
with jQuery. This retrieves the height of the first item in the wrapped set as a number.
Trying to use
.style.height
only works if you have set the property in the first place. Not very useful!

NON JQUERY since there were a bunch of links using elem.style.height in the top of these answers...
INNER HEIGHT:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Element.clientHeight
document.getElementById(id_attribute_value).clientHeight;
OUTER HEIGHT:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLElement.offsetHeight
document.getElementById(id_attribute_value).offsetHeight;
Or one of my favorite references: http://youmightnotneedjquery.com/

I use this to get the height of an element (returns float):
document.getElementById('someDiv').getBoundingClientRect().height
It also works when you use the virtual DOM. I use it in Vue like this:
this.$refs['some-ref'].getBoundingClientRect().height
For a Vue component:
this.$refs['some-ref'].$el.getBoundingClientRect().height

You can use .outerHeight() for this purpose.
It will give you full rendered height of the element. Also, you don't need to set any css-height of the element. For precaution you can keep its height auto so it can be rendered as per content's height.
//if you need height of div excluding margin/padding/border
$('#someDiv').height();
//if you need height of div with padding but without border + margin
$('#someDiv').innerHeight();
// if you need height of div including padding and border
$('#someDiv').outerHeight();
//and at last for including border + margin + padding, can use
$('#someDiv').outerHeight(true);
For a clear view of these function you can go for jQuery's site or a detailed post here.
it will clear the difference between .height() / innerHeight() / outerHeight()

style = window.getComputedStyle(your_element);
then simply: style.height

Definitely use
$('#someDiv').height() // to read it
or
$('#someDiv').height(newHeight) // to set it
I'm posting this as an additional answer because theres a couple important things I just learnt.
I almost fell into the trap just now of using offsetHeight. This is what happened :
I used the good old trick of using a debugger to 'watch' what properties my element has
I saw which one has a value around the value I was expecting
It was offsetHeight - so I used that.
Then i realized it didnt work with a hidden DIV
I tried hiding after calculating maxHeight but that looked clumsy - got in a mess.
I did a search - discovered jQuery.height() - and used it
found out height() works even on hidden elements
just for fun I checked the jQuery implementation of height/width
Here's just a portion of it :
Math.max(
Math.max(document.body["scroll" + name], document.documentElement["scroll" + name]),
Math.max(document.body["offset" + name], document.documentElement["offset" + name])
)
Yup it looks at BOTH scroll and offset. If that fails it looks even further, taking into account browser and css compatibility issues. In other words STUFF I DONT CARE ABOUT - or want to.
But I dont have to. Thanks jQuery!
Moral of the story : if jQuery has a method for something its probably for a good reason, likely related to compatibilty.
If you haven't read through the jQuery list of methods recently I suggest you take a look.

I think the best way to do this in 2020 is to use vanilla js and getBoundingClientRect().height;
Here's an example
let div = document.querySelector('div');
let divHeight = div.getBoundingClientRect().height;
console.log(`Div Height: ${divHeight}`);
<div>
How high am I? 🥴
</div>
On top of getting height this way, we also have access to a bunch of other stuff about the div.
let div = document.querySelector('div');
let divInfo = div.getBoundingClientRect();
console.log(divInfo);
<div>What else am I? 🥴</div>

I made a simple code that doesn't even need JQuery and probably gonna help some people.
It gets the total height of 'ID1' after loaded and use it on 'ID2'
function anyName(){
var varname=document.getElementById('ID1').offsetHeight;
document.getElementById('ID2').style.height=varname+'px';
}
Then just set the body to load it
<body onload='anyName()'>

document.querySelector('.project_list_div').offsetHeight;

Hm we can get the Element geometry...
var geometry;
geometry={};
var element=document.getElementById(#ibims);
var rect = element.getBoundingClientRect();
this.geometry.top=rect.top;
this.geometry.right=rect.right;
this.geometry.bottom=rect.bottom;
this.geometry.left=rect.left;
this.geometry.height=this.geometry.bottom-this.geometry.top;
this.geometry.width=this.geometry.right-this.geometry.left;
console.log(this.geometry);
How about this plain JS ?

So is this the answer?
"If you need to calculate something but not show it, set the element to visibility:hidden and position:absolute, add it to the DOM tree, get the offsetHeight, and remove it. (That's what the prototype library does behind the lines last time I checked)."
I have the same problem on a number of elements. There is no jQuery or Prototype to be used on the site but I'm all in favor of borrowing the technique if it works. As an example of some things that failed to work, followed by what did, I have the following code:
// Layout Height Get
function fnElementHeightMaxGet(DoScroll, DoBase, elementPassed, elementHeightDefault)
{
var DoOffset = true;
if (!elementPassed) { return 0; }
if (!elementPassed.style) { return 0; }
var thisHeight = 0;
var heightBase = parseInt(elementPassed.style.height);
var heightOffset = parseInt(elementPassed.offsetHeight);
var heightScroll = parseInt(elementPassed.scrollHeight);
var heightClient = parseInt(elementPassed.clientHeight);
var heightNode = 0;
var heightRects = 0;
//
if (DoBase) {
if (heightBase > thisHeight) { thisHeight = heightBase; }
}
if (DoOffset) {
if (heightOffset > thisHeight) { thisHeight = heightOffset; }
}
if (DoScroll) {
if (heightScroll > thisHeight) { thisHeight = heightScroll; }
}
//
if (thisHeight == 0) { thisHeight = heightClient; }
//
if (thisHeight == 0) {
// Dom Add:
// all else failed so use the protype approach...
var elBodyTempContainer = document.getElementById('BodyTempContainer');
elBodyTempContainer.appendChild(elementPassed);
heightNode = elBodyTempContainer.childNodes[0].offsetHeight;
elBodyTempContainer.removeChild(elementPassed);
if (heightNode > thisHeight) { thisHeight = heightNode; }
//
// Bounding Rect:
// Or this approach...
var clientRects = elementPassed.getClientRects();
heightRects = clientRects.height;
if (heightRects > thisHeight) { thisHeight = heightRects; }
}
//
// Default height not appropriate here
// if (thisHeight == 0) { thisHeight = elementHeightDefault; }
if (thisHeight > 3000) {
// ERROR
thisHeight = 3000;
}
return thisHeight;
}
which basically tries anything and everything only to get a zero result. ClientHeight with no affect. With the problem elements I typically get NaN in the Base and zero in the Offset and Scroll heights. I then tried the Add DOM solution and clientRects to see if it works here.
29 Jun 2011,
I did indeed update the code to try both adding to DOM and clientHeight with better results than I expected.
1) clientHeight was also 0.
2) Dom actually gave me a height which was great.
3) ClientRects returns a result almost identical to the DOM technique.
Because the elements added are fluid in nature, when they are added to an otherwise empty DOM Temp element they are rendered according to the width of that container. This get weird, because that is 30px shorter than it eventually ends up.
I added a few snapshots to illustrate how the height is calculated differently.
The height differences are obvious. I could certainly add absolute positioning and hidden but I am sure that will have no effect. I continued to be convinced this would not work!
(I digress further) The height comes out (renders) lower than the true rendered height. This could be addressed by setting the width of the DOM Temp element to match the existing parent and could be done fairly accurately in theory. I also do not know what would result from removing them and adding them back into their existing location. As they arrived through an innerHTML technique I will be looking using this different approach.
* HOWEVER * None of that was necessary. In fact it worked as advertised and returned the correct height!!!
When I was able to get the menus visible again amazingly DOM had returned the correct height per the fluid layout at the top of the page (279px). The above code also uses getClientRects which return 280px.
This is illustrated in the following snapshot (taken from Chrome once working.)
Now I have noooooo idea why that prototype trick works, but it seems to. Alternatively, getClientRects also works.
I suspect the cause of all this trouble with these particular elements was the use of innerHTML instead of appendChild, but that is pure speculation at this point.

offsetHeight, usually.
If you need to calculate something but not show it, set the element to visibility:hidden and position:absolute, add it to the DOM tree, get the offsetHeight, and remove it. (That's what the prototype library does behind the scenes last time I checked).

Sometimes offsetHeight will return zero because the element you've created has not been rendered in the Dom yet. I wrote this function for such circumstances:
function getHeight(element)
{
var e = element.cloneNode(true);
e.style.visibility = "hidden";
document.body.appendChild(e);
var height = e.offsetHeight + 0;
document.body.removeChild(e);
e.style.visibility = "visible";
return height;
}

If you are using jQuery already, your best bet is .outerHeight() or .height(), as has been stated.
Without jQuery, you can check the box-sizing in use and add up various paddings + borders + clientHeight, or you can use getComputedStyle:
var h = getComputedStyle(document.getElementById('someDiv')).height;
h will now be a string like a "53.825px".
And I can't find the reference, but I think I heard getComputedStyle() can be expensive, so it's probably not something you want to call on each window.onscroll event (but then, neither is jQuery's height()).

With MooTools:
$('someDiv').getSize().y

If i understood your question correctly, then maybe something like this would help:
function testDistance(node1, node2) {
/* get top position of node 1 */
let n1Pos = node1.offsetTop;
/* get height of node 1 */
let n1Height = node1.clientHeight;
/* get top position of node 2 */
let n2Pos = node2.offsetTop;
/* get height of node 2 */
let n2Height = node2.clientHeight;
/* add height of both nodes */
let heightTogether = n1Height + n2Height;
/* calculate distance from top of node 1 to bottom of node 2 */
let actualDistance = (n2Pos + n2Height) - n1Pos;
/* if the distance between top of node 1 and bottom of node 2
is bigger than their heights combined, than there is something between them */
if (actualDistance > heightTogether) {
/* do something here if they are not together */
console.log('they are not together');
} else {
/* do something here if they are together */
console.log('together');
}
}

Have you set the height in the css specifically? If you haven't you need to use offsetHeight; rather than height
var h = document.getElementById('someDiv').style.offsetHeight;

How to split html to full-screen height pages?

I need to split some html content to pages, so that each page would have height of the screen and some predefined width. Page split can happen in the middle of paragraph (or probably some other html element), so this situation should be handled somehow.
What I really want to achieve is the effect of reading the book, page by page. I assume there will be a need for some javascript, so I'd prefer to to this with jQuery, but if other framework is required, it's also okay.
I have to admit that I'm quite new to HTML and all, so sorry if my guess is stupid, but currently I'm considering the following approach: measure actual height of the visible area (need to figure out how yet), then take my html document and incrementally take tag after tag, put this into invisible div and calculate its resulting height. When I'll have its height more than page height, I'm done. However, this approach will not work in case of long tags, e.g. long paragraph.
Thanks in advance.
EDIT: thanks for your previous answers. I tried to use approach of manual calculating the size of the elements, and encountered one problem which I cannot solve in a good way. This is problem of collapsing margins. What I'm trying to do is to loop through all the paragraphs in my document and sum up results of .outerHeight(true) jQuery call. This should give me the full height of element, including padding, margin and border. And it actually does what it says, but the problem here is that it doesn't take collapsing margins into account. Because of that I end up with wrong overall size (bigger than real one), because browser throws away some of margins (of adjacent paragraphs in my case), but I take them into account.
Any ideas how to solve this other than introducing the algorithm deciding which margins are collapsed and which are not? I think it is ugly...

You could use CSS3 multi-column rules, example: http://www.quirksmode.org/css/multicolumn.html
Or for support in all browsers use a javascript plugin: http://welcome.totheinter.net/columnizer-jquery-plugin/
This plugin even has a multi-page multi-column example: http://welcome.totheinter.net/2009/06/18/dynamic-multi-page-multi-column-newsletter-layout-with-columnizer/

I can think of one framework which seems to do what you need (and a bit more): https://github.com/Treesaver/treesaver

jQuery will give you the height (in pixels) of an element with the height() function.
jQuery("BODY").height() will give you the maximum height of the view port (though only if your content height is >= the height of the BODY - otherwise it will give you the height of how much space the body is taking up in the view port.)
Counting the heights of the P tags (or other tags) seems like a good way to go. I suppose if you want to break up the content of a P tag for large paragraphs, you could define a maximum "breakage" height for the last P tag on a page. You can then break rest of the contents of the P tag by creating a new P tag with jQuery("#the-next-page-id).append(jQuery("<P>"+restOfTheParagraphContent+"</P>"))

Use your own logic to calculate the height of each element in the html body
using jQuery code
$('selector').height();
Using this, you can calculate the height of some html elements and decide how much
elements should be displayed on your device screen.
for more, please visit jQuery Height Documentation

In case anyone still looking for something like this I recently did it using JQuery. It also leaves the first page empty (for title and such):
https://jsfiddle.net/xs31xzvt/
It basically iterates over the movable items and insert them into a new div if the previous div is full.
(function($) {
$(document).ready(formatPages)
function formatPages() {
var container = $('.container');
var subPage = $('.subpage').get(0);
var subPageHeight = subPage.offsetHeight;
var subPageScrollHeight = subPage.scrollHeight;
// See how many pages we'll need
var pages = Math.floor(subPageScrollHeight / subPageHeight) + 1;
//add a new page
var pageCount = 2;
var pageDiv = createPageDiv(pageCount);
var subPageDiv = createSubPageDiv(pageCount);
var addPage = function (){
pageCount++;
pageDiv = createPageDiv(pageCount);
subPageDiv = createSubPageDiv(pageCount);
pageDiv.append(subPageDiv);
container.append(pageDiv);
pageContentHeight = 0;
}
addPage()
container.append(pageDiv);
$('.movable').each(function() {
var element = $(this);
//remove the element
element.detach();
//try to add the element to the current page
if (pageContentHeight + element.get(0).offsetHeight > subPageHeight) {
subPageDiv.append(getFooterDiv().show());
//add a new page
addPage();
}
subPageDiv.append(element);
pageContentHeight += element.get(0).offsetHeight;
});
}
function createPageDiv(pageNum) {
return $('<div/>', {
class: 'page',
id: 'page' + pageNum
});
}
function createSubPageDiv(pageNum) {
return $('<div/>', {
class: 'subpage',
id: 'subpage' + pageNum
});
}
function getFooterDiv() {
return $('.footer').first().clone();
}
}(jQuery));

Fit text to a div

I have a div with fixed height and width and inside I have text that is changing. Sometimes it can be a word or two and sometimes it can be a sentence. What I need is to shrink the font size so the text fits to that div.

i had an idea and it worked :) here is my code
$('li').each(function () {
while ($(this).outerHeight() > 25) {
var currentFontSize = $(this).css("font-size");
$(this).css("font-size", (parseFloat(currentFontSize) - 1) + "px");
}
});

I had a similar issue, which made me write my own plugin for this. One solution is to use the shrink-to-fit-approach, as described by user54316.
However if you have to fit multiple items or are concerned with performance, e.g., on window resize, have a look at jquery-quickfit.
It meassures and calculates a size invariant meassure for each letter of the text to fit and uses this to calculate the next best font-size which fits the text into the container.
The calculations are cached, which makes it very fast (there is virtually no performance hit from the 2nd resize on forward) when dealing with multiple texts or having to fit a text multiple times, like e.g., on window resize. I think it would work perfect in your case.
You'd just have to call
$('#yourid').quickfit()
after you changed the text.
Production example, fitting 14x16x2 texts

Try giving the font-size in em:
http://clagnut.com/blog/348/
http://kyleschaeffer.com/best-practices/css-font-size-em-vs-px-vs-pt-vs/

There is a jQuery plugin for that: FitText.js
Here the URL: https://github.com/davatron5000/FitText.js
Here's an example: http://jsfiddle.net/martinschaer/sRvB9/
The function fitText() receives a parameter, with which you need to "play" in order to get the results you want. Also, it resized the text when the window is resized; if you need to have the text resized when (for example) a div is resized, you should add a pair of JS lines for that ;)

$text.css('font-size', "100px");
$text.css('line-height', "100px");
var foo= $div.width() / $text.width();
var bar= $div.height() / $text.height();
if(foo < bar) {
foo=Math.floor(foo*100) +"px";
$text.css('font-size', foo);
$text.css('line-height', foo);
} else {
bar=Math.floor(bar*100) +"px";
$text.css('font-size', bar);
$text.css('line-height', bar);
}
//centralizing text, top and left are defined as 50% on the CSS, optional
$text.css('margin-left', -$text.width() /2 + "px");
$text.css('margin-top', -$text.height() /2 + "px");
One small note is that you need to call this function if the div itself changes size. You can bind this code to the resize eventof the div.

you can do it by defining the font size like......
.small {font-size: 0.8em}
you can see effect here working demo

Adjusting elements based on scrollHeight using JQuery

Here's what i have so far:
function loadOff(){
$(document).ready(function(){
$("#eLoader").ajaxStop(function(){
$(this).hide();
$("#eventsContent").show();
var h = document.body.scrollHeight;
$("#bodyBackground").css("height",h+100+"px");
$("#sidePanel1").css("height",h-105+100+"px");
$("#bottom").css("top",h+100+"px");
});
});
}
This is a callback function for a JQuery ajax function, basically what is does is when all ajax is finished .ajaxStop() it hides the loader then shows the content.
The problem i am having is adjusting bodyBackground, sidePanel, and bottom to fit the content. I dont care to have it elastic and retract for short content at this point, i would just like it to extend to proper positioning based on content length.
All divs are absolutely positioned. The numbers in the function are broken down simply to make it easy to explain. -105 is the offsetTop of that element and +100 is the margin between the end of the content and the elements.
if there is a better, more efficient way to achieve this outcome, please, do tell.
Thanks.

Based on your code, the only thing you ought to see is the top 105px of #sidePanel1. Is that your intent? (h = the bottom of the window, according to your code.)
Sticking with the JQuery patterns, you would use
var h = $(window).height();
Maybe you're looking for this instead of the browser window's height? It will get the height of the content element.
$("#eventsContent").outerHeight();

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