2 columns of equal height - Twitter's Bootstrap 2.0

Question

Well, everybody knows that Twitter's Bootstrap is a great tool and makes a lot of things easier for those who, like me, doesn't know much about CSS yet. But, sometimes, it can be a problem too.

The thing is: I'm using a fixed 940px-wide, 12-column grid centered layout with two columns, and I wanted that both of the columns had the same height. The code right now is like this:

<div class="container">
 <div class="content">
 <div class="row">
 <div class="span8 div-content">
 <div class="center95">
 <div id="notWrap">
 <div id="not">
 </div>
 </div>
 </div>
 </div>
 <div class="span4 div-sidebar">
 <div class="center90">
 <div id="myPWrap">
 <div id="myP">
 </div>
 </div>
 <hr />
 <div id="otherPWrap">
 <div id="otherP">
 </div>
 </div>
 </div>
 </div>
 </div>
 </div>
 <footer id="bottom" class="footer">
 <p>&copy;</p> 
 </footer> 
</div>

As you can see, there are divs with no content, like "myP", "otherP" and "not". They are filled through Javascript, and the amount of content stored in them may vary and, because of that, in many times a column (The "columns" here are represented by the div with the "div-content" class and by the div with the "div-sidebar" class) will be bigger than the other (In my particular case, both columns may be "the bigger one").

Here's a picture, if it helps: project-pic

Basically, the left column (The <div class="span8 div-content"> in the code) needs to be the same size of the right column (The <div class="span4 div-sidebar"> in the code), and vice versa. Also, if it helps, the yellow part is the <div class="content"> and the white background is the <div class="container">. The <div class="row"> is just a container of the two columns and has no color.

I know that the "columns with same height" problem is a recurrent problem for web programmers, but the solutions I tried so far didn't worked. I really wouldn't like the "Faux Column solution" because, as I am a newbie in CSS, I didn't want to appeal to a workaround like this one. If possible, I'd rather stick to pure CSS.

In advance, thanks for those who'll be willing to help.

• Sherbrow: Did you look into a position: absolute; and top: 0;bottom: 0; ? If so, maybe fake the background with a border or a wrapper, and keep the background white. It just has to appear the same height.

Answer 1

The one that has always worked for me is:

#myPWrap,#otherPWrap {
 overflow:hidden;
}
#myP,#otherP {
 margin-bottom: -99999px;
 padding-bottom: 99999px;
}

You can also try to turn the wrap into a table and the #myP into a table col.

#myPWrap,#otherPWrap {
 display: table;
}
#myP,#otherP {
 display: table-cell;
}

• Falassion: Oh, I think I wasn't clear: the divs that must have the same sizes are the outer ones, the one with the "div-content" class and the one with the "div-sidebar" class. Similar solution, or it changes it all?
• filype: The same solutions should apply
• filype: which one? the second or the first snippet?

Answer 2

I solved this with a custom jQuery max plugin:

$.fn.max = function(selector) { 
 return Math.max.apply(null, this.map(function(index, el) { return selector.apply(el); }).get() ); 
}

Here content-box is my internal column element, content-container is the wrapper that contains the columns:

$('.content-box').height(function () {
 var maxHeight = $(this).closest('.content-container').find('.content-box')
 .max( function () {
 return $(this).height();
 });
 return maxHeight;
})

Hope this helps.