Adjust height on jQueryUI dialog to be as tall as content up to a max

Question

Using jQueryUI's dialog boxes, I want to popup information. My problem is I want to set the height of the dialog to however high the content is. If I don't specify a height, this works perfect. The height is automatically calculated based on the height of the content. Problem then is if the content is very tall, the dialog gets very tall too and goes below the window... maxHeight doesn't work well in this case either.

So I've been able to somewhat resolve this by adjusting the height and position after displaying the popup. However, while the content is being loaded (through ajax), it goes well below the screen. It's only after finishing that I can readjust the window. I'd rather not have that awkward delay.

UPDATE: Turns out I want something even more than just a maxHeight. I want a max INITIAL height. So after loading the dialog with data, it can only grow to a certain height. But after, you're allowed to expand the window. It's pretty easy to accomplish this:

$('<div><div></div></div>').attr('title', options.title).appendTo('body').dialog({
    open: function() {
        $(this).children().css('maxHeight', maxInitialHeight).load(url, function() {
            thisDialog.$dialog.dialog('option', 'position', 'center');
        });
    }
});

That will dynamically load a dialog from 'url' with content up to a maxInitialHeight height. The 2 divs nested are necessary.

Answer 1

You could insert your content inside a <div class="dialog-data" /> and make that div the content of your dialog.

Then you could, with CSS, specify a max-height and overflow: auto to your div.dialog-data.

Answer 2

maybe like this

options.open = function() {
    var dialog = $(this).dialog('widget');
    var content = dialog.find('.ui-dialog-content');
    $.ajax({
        url: 'this your url',
        success: function(result, status, xhr) {
            content.empty().append(result);
            content.dialog(
                'option',
                {
                    // this your options
                }
            );
        };
    });
};