Maximum and Minimum Height and Width in Internet Explorer

Behold the seventh wonder of the virtual world: max/min-height and max/min-width properties are possible in Internet Explorer! Indeed, by taking advantage of IE’s proprietary CSS attribute, expression, you too can whip IE widths and heights into desirable proportions. The CSS expression attribute enables JavaScript commands to be executed within Internet Explorer. JavaScript via CSS? Thanks, Microsoft!

How it works in other browsers

Why is this so great? Well, because in other, standards-compliant browsers, max/min-height and max/min-width properties are easily accomplished with this simple bit of CSS..

<div style="max-width:333px;">
	[the contents of this division will be at most 333px in width on compliant browsers]
</p>

Of course, this is waaay tooo easy for Internet Explorer, which completely fails to understand the max-width attribute. Fortunately, IE supports its own expression attribute, which enables us to use JavaScript expressions to manipulate (X)HTML document properties such as max-width and max-height. For example, to specify a width property value via the expression attribute, we could use this:

div {
	width: expression(333 + "px");
}

..Which is equivalent to this:

div {
	width: 333px;
}

The down side to using IE’s expression attribute is that it fails when JavaScript is disabled (or otherwise missing) in the user’s browser. Nonetheless, establishing max/min-widths/heights (as well as other properties) remains an important tool in the web developer’s toolbox. So, without further ado, here are a few generalized examples for slapping IE widths and heights into proper shape..

max-width in IE

This method has been verified in IE6 and should also work in IE5. Simply change the values to suit your needs (code commented with explanatory notes) and include in your document via conditional comment. In this example, we are setting the max-width at 777px¹ for IE and all standards-compliant browsers:

* html div#division { 
	width: expression( document.body.clientWidth > 776 ? "777px" : "auto" ); /* sets max-width for IE */
}
div#division { 
	max-width: 777px; /* this sets the max-width value for all standards-compliant browsers */
}

In this example, we are setting the max-width at 33em for IE and all standards-compliant browsers:

* html div#division {
	width: expression( document.body.clientWidth > (500/12) * parseInt(document.body.currentStyle.fontSize) ? "33em" : "auto" );
}
div#division {
	max-width: 33em; /* this sets the max-width value for all standards-compliant browsers */
}

min-width in IE

This method has been verified in IE6 and should also work in IE5. Simply change the values to suit your needs (code commented with explanatory notes). In this example, we are setting the min-width at 333px¹ for IE and all standards-compliant browsers:

* html div#division { 
	width: expression( document.body.clientWidth < 334 ? "333px" : "auto" ); /* set min-width for IE */
}
div#division { 
	min-width: 333px; /* sets min-width value for all standards-compliant browsers */
}

max-height in IE

This method has been verified in IE6 and should also work in IE5. Simply change the values to suit your needs (code commented with explanatory notes). In this example, we are setting the max-height at 333px¹ for IE and all standards-compliant browsers:

* html div#division { 
	height: expression( this.scrollHeight > 332 ? "333px" : "auto" ); /* sets max-height for IE */
}
div#division {
	max-height: 333px; /* sets max-height value for all standards-compliant browsers */
}

min-height in IE

This method has been verified in IE6 and should also work in IE5. Simply change the values to suit your needs (code commented with explanatory notes). In this example, we are setting the min-height at 333px¹ for IE and all standards-compliant browsers:

* html div#division { 
	height: expression( this.scrollHeight < 334 ? "333px" : "auto" ); /* sets min-height for IE */
}
div#division { 
	min-height: 333px; /* sets min-height value for all standards-compliant browsers */
}

Footnotes

• ¹ Why is the conditional value slightly different than the target value in the expression? Read this comment to find out.

About the Author

Jeff Starr = Creative thinker. Passionate about free and open Web.