FAQ: Sizing Elements - Percentages: Height & Width

This community-built FAQ covers the “Percentages: Height & Width” exercise from the lesson “Sizing Elements”.

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FAQs on the exercise Percentages: Height & Width

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Why did the post section of the html overflow its parent(blog)?

2 Likes

It seems that setting height and width in pixels rather than % is going to cause problems on different devices displays etc. Is there ever a time when you should use pixels or is it recommended to always use percentage for width and height?

2 Likes

Same question. If there’s seemingly no padding/margin/border, why would it overflow when you’re setting it to a % of the parent?

2 Likes

Same question I was using box-sizing:border-box and I had 2 divs next to each other
div 1 has width: 100px
div 2 has width: 100%
with both using float left but for some reason div 2 always shows under div 1 instead of next to div 1 and filling it in. What do I do? (div 1 has a border of 1px solid)

Hi @cssplayer91911 :slight_smile:
Have you set display: inline-block in CSS?

1 Like

Hi, I have a question, when do we have to use %?

1 Like

What I understood is that the % unit allows us to size elements relative to their parent elements. So if we had a <div> with a width of 100px, and inside of this <div>, we had another <div> with a width of 50%, that child <div> would have a width of 50px (50% of 100px)

<div class="parent">⠀⠀
  <div></div>
</div>
.parent {
  width: 100px;
}

.parent div {
  width: 50%; /* 50px */
}

However, this lesson kind of confuses me with the instructions. I get why we gave
.images .image-container a width of 50% (To make both image containers the same size allowing them to be next to each other). However, there are a few things that I don’t get: why when we set the width of .post .image-container to 100%, it overflowed, why we set the width of #blog .post to 52% and why we set the width of #blog to 86% - we didn’t see any visual difference unless we inspected it using dev tools

2 Likes

task2:
Notice that the blog’s text becomes illegible at smaller widths.

I didn’t find it illegible. How does “illegible” look like if it happens? Thank you

1 Like

Sort of… like all the text is really really thin and stacked up like a lower of words.

I need a help with a syntax.

background-image: url(‘camel-background.png’);

If I am using this code, Do I need to have the image in the root folder? Where I am keeping the HTML and CSS files already.

From where would the image be obtained.

Note: Because the box model includes padding, borders, and margins, setting an element’s width to 100% may cause content to overflow its parent container. While tempting, 100% should only be used when content will not have padding, border, or margin."

if I use box-sizing: border-box, will the content with padding, border and margin still overflow

make sure that there is no padding , border or margin.

I have a question about when I set the .post .image-container to 100%, once I pull the screen into a smaller size, the image will move to the right side instead of keeping center. How to fix it?

1 Like

I have the same question

1 Like

As I understand it, if you simply declare the path as the name of the file, it is assumed that the file you’re referring to is in the same folder (directory) as your CSS file. Whenever you declare a relative path to a file in CSS or HTML, just remember that it is in relation to the file you’re working in. So if you’re declaring the path in HTML, think of where the file is in the file system in relation to the HTML file. The same goes for the CSS.

I realise this is a few years later than when you asked this question, but hopefully this response will be useful for others too. :slight_smile: