2015 update: the flexbox approach
There are two other answers briefly mentioning flexbox; however, that was more than two years ago, and they don't provide any examples. The specification for flexbox has definitely settled now.
Note: Though CSS Flexible Boxes Layout specification is at the Candidate Recommendation stage, not all browsers have implemented it. WebKit implementation must be prefixed with -webkit-; Internet Explorer implements an old version of the spec, prefixed with -ms-; Opera 12.10 implements the latest version of the spec, unprefixed. See the compatibility table on each property for an up-to-date compatibility status.
(taken from https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Flexible_boxes)
All major browsers and IE11+ support Flexbox. For IE 10 or older, you can use the FlexieJS shim.
To check current support you can also see here:
http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox
Working example
With flexbox you can easily switch between any of your rows or columns either having fixed dimensions, content-sized dimensions or remaining-space dimensions. In my example I have set the header to snap to its content (as per the OPs question), I've added a footer to show how to add a fixed-height region and then set the content area to fill up the remaining space.
html,
body {
height: 100%;
margin: 0;
}
.box {
display: flex;
flex-flow: column;
height: 100%;
}
.box .row {
border: 1px dotted grey;
}
.box .row.header {
flex: 0 1 auto;
/* The above is shorthand for:
flex-grow: 0,
flex-shrink: 1,
flex-basis: auto
*/
}
.box .row.content {
flex: 1 1 auto;
}
.box .row.footer {
flex: 0 1 40px;
}
<!-- Obviously, you could use HTML5 tags like `header`, `footer` and `section` -->
<div class="box">
<div class="row header">
<p><b>header</b>
<br />
<br />(sized to content)</p>
</div>
<div class="row content">
<p>
<b>content</b>
(fills remaining space)
</p>
</div>
<div class="row footer">
<p><b>footer</b> (fixed height)</p>
</div>
</div>
In the CSS above, the flex property shorthands the flex-grow, flex-shrink, and flex-basis properties to establish the flexibility of the flex items. Mozilla has a good introduction to the flexible boxes model.
Basics
For controlling "cellpadding" in CSS, you can simply use padding
on table cells. E.g. for 10px of "cellpadding":
td {
padding: 10px;
}
For "cellspacing", you can apply the border-spacing
CSS property to your table. E.g. for 10px of "cellspacing":
table {
border-spacing: 10px;
border-collapse: separate;
}
This property will even allow separate horizontal and vertical spacing, something you couldn't do with old-school "cellspacing".
Issues in IE ≤ 7
This will work in almost all popular browsers except for Internet Explorer up through Internet Explorer 7, where you're almost out of luck. I say "almost" because these browsers still support the border-collapse
property, which merges the borders of adjoining table cells. If you're trying to eliminate cellspacing (that is, cellspacing="0"
) then border-collapse:collapse
should have the same effect: no space between table cells. This support is buggy, though, as it does not override an existing cellspacing
HTML attribute on the table element.
In short: for non-Internet Explorer 5-7 browsers, border-spacing
handles you. For Internet Explorer, if your situation is just right (you want 0 cellspacing and your table doesn't have it defined already), you can use border-collapse:collapse
.
table {
border-spacing: 0;
border-collapse: collapse;
}
Note: For a great overview of CSS properties that one can apply to tables and for which browsers, see this fantastic Quirksmode page.
Best Answer
CSS2
If you need to make the image bigger, you must edit the image itself in an image editor.
If you use the img tag, you can change the size, but that would not give you the desired result if you need the image to be background for some other content (and it will not repeat itself like you seems to want)...
CSS3 unleash the powers
This is possible to do in CSS3 with
background-size
.All modern browsers support this, so unless you need to support old browsers, this is the way to do it.
Supported browsers:
Mozilla Firefox 4.0+ (Gecko 2.0+), Microsoft Internet Explorer 9.0+, Opera 10.0+, Safari 4.1+ (webkit 532) and Chrome 3.0+.
In particular, I like the
cover
andcontain
values that gives us new power of control that we didn't have before.Round
You can also use
background-size: round
that have a meaning in combination with repeat:This will adjust the image width so it fits a whole number of times in the background positioning area.
Additional note
If the size you need is static pixel size, it is still smart to physically resize the actual image. This is both to improve quality of the resize (given that your image software does a better job than the browsers), and to save bandwidth if the original image is larger than what to display.