Html – Fill the remaining height or width in a flex container

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.

You should use the .offsetWidth and .offsetHeight properties. Note they belong to the element, not .style.

var width = document.getElementById('foo').offsetWidth;

Function .getBoundingClientRect() returns dimensions and location of element as floating-point numbers after performing CSS transforms.

> console.log(document.getElementById('id').getBoundingClientRect())
DOMRect {
    bottom: 177,
    height: 54.7,
    left: 278.5,​
    right: 909.5,
    top: 122.3,
    width: 631,
    x: 278.5,
    y: 122.3,
}