Is it possible to render empty <div style="width:50%"> </div> with CSS in xHTML strict 1.0 without setting width and height in pixels?

Question

Is it possible to render empty <div style="width:50%"> </div> with CSS in xHTML strict 1.0 without setting width and height in absolute values and not adding   inside? Targets are IE7-8, FF 3.x

Can I somehow render empty div if I want it to get 50% width and variable height?

Answer 1

Add some padding to the DIV so that even if there is absolutely nothing between the opening and the closing tags, you still see something.

<div style="width:50%; padding:10px;"></div>