CSS Layout - Dynamic width DIV

Question

Hi - I have a pretty common layout issue that I have traditionally used a table to solve, but would like some advice on getting it done with CSS. I have 3 images that makeup a 'container'. The left and right images are usually just shown using tags, and the center image is displayed as a 'background-image" with my content over it, so that the content appears to be in the container. I'm sure you've seen/used this a million times:

<table width="100" cellpadding="0"><tr>
<td width="50"><img src="myleftimage" /></td>
<td style="background: url('mymiddleimage');">Content goes here...</td>
<td width="50"><img src="myrightimage" /></td>
</tr></table>

The nice thing about this is that the width of the table is always the width of the browser (or parent) and the middle column where the content is dynamically sizes to take up the remaining space between the left/right images.

What I want to is recreate this using CSS, with as little hard coded info as possible. So something like this:

<div style="float:left; width:100%">
  <div style="width: 50px;float:left;"><img src="myleftimage" /></div>
  <div style="background: url('mymiddleimage');float:left;width:???">Content goes here...</div>
  <div style="width: 50px;float:left;"><img src="myrightimage" /></div>
</div>

This works great accept for the middle div -how do I set the width? Right now I can hard-code it to be, say, 92%, etc. But want I want is for it to auto-fill the space. Can it be done using only CSS?

Answer 1

This will do what you want. Fixed sides with 50px-width, and the content fills the remaining area.

<div style="width=100%;">
    <div style="width: 50px; float: left;">Left Side</div>
    <div style="width: 50px; float: right;">Right Side</div>
    <div style="margin-left: 50px; margin-right: 50px;">Content Goes Here</div>
</div>

Answer 2

Or, if you know the width of the two "side" images and don't want to deal with floats:

<div class="container">
    <div class="left-panel"><img src="myleftimage" /></div>
    <div class="center-panel">Content goes here...</div>
    <div class="right-panel"><img src="myrightimage" /></div>
</div>

CSS:

.container {
    position:relative;
    padding-left:50px;
    padding-right:50px;
}

.container .left-panel {
    width: 50px;
    position:absolute;
    left:0px;
    top:0px;
}

.container .right-panel {
    width: 50px;
    position:absolute;
    right:0px;
    top:0px;
}

.container .center-panel {
    background: url('mymiddleimage');
}

Notes:

Position:relative on the parent div is used to make absolutely positioned children position themselves relative to that node.

Answer 3

try

<div style="width=100%;">
    <div style="width:50px; float: left;"><img src="myleftimage" /></div>
    <div style="width:50px; float: right;"><img src="myrightimage" /></div>
    <div style="display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right: auto;">Content Goes Here</div>
</div>

or

<div style="width=100%; border:2px solid #dadada;">
    <div style="width:50px; float: left;"><img src="myleftimage" /></div>
    <div style="width:50px; float: right;"><img src="myrightimage" /></div>
    <div style="display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right: auto;">Content Goes Here</div>
<div style="clear:both"></div>    
</div>