IE8 overflow:auto with max-height

Question

I have an element which may contain very big amounts of data, but I don't want it to ruin the page layout, so I set max-height: 100px and overflow:auto, hoping for scrollbars to appear when the content does not fit.

It all works fine in Firefox and IE7, but IE8 behaves as if overflow:hidden was present instead of overflow:auto.

I tried overflow:scroll, still does not help, IE8 simply truncates the content without showing scrollbars. Changing max-height declaration to height makes overflow work OK, it's the combination of max-height and overflow:auto that breaks things.

This is also logged as an official bug in the final, release version of IE8

Is there a workaround? For now I resorted to using height instead of max-height, but it leaves plenty of empty space in case there isn't much data.

Just a note for ppl who find this later, I've seen setting max-height and overflow on a div in IE8 crash the entire page - as in the page stays completely blank, but the page title is shown. Fun fun ... — James, Jul 19 '11 at 09:33
Yes, setting max-height and overflow caused a page to not render (completely blank). I switched to overflow-y since that worked for my needs. — Wizard of Ogz, Dec 13 '11 at 06:38

score 72 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 14 '16 at 19:09

72

This is a really nasty bug as it affects us heavily on Stack Overflow with <pre> code blocks, which have max-height:600 and width:auto.

It is logged as a bug in the final version of IE8 with no fix.

http://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=408759

There is a really, really hacky CSS workaround:

http://my.opera.com/dbloom/blog/2009/03/11/css-hack-for-ie8-standards-mode

/*
SUPER nasty IE8 hack to deal with this bug
*/
pre 
{
    max-height: none\9 
}

and of course conditional CSS as others have mentioned, but I dislike that because it means you're serving up extra HTML cruft in every page request.

edited Jan 14 '16 at 19:09

thanksd

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answered May 19 '09 at 08:34

Jeff Atwood

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7

I'm getting a 404 on the Microsoft link. – Craig Walker Apr 26 '10 at 19:53
thanks for the detail: my.opera (linked) is now shut… – ptim Jun 25 '14 at 07:18
I don't suppose anyone knows where the Microsoft link could have been moved to? – Mike Gwilt Jun 08 '15 at 14:30

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 11 '11 at 13:26

4

{
overflow:auto
}

Try div overflow:auto

answered Feb 11 '11 at 13:26

Egglabs

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James Koch · Answer 3 · 2009-03-23T16:26:54.590

I saw this logged as a fixed bug in RC1. But I've found a variation that seems to cause a hard assert render failure. Involves these two styles in a nested table.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
    <title>Test</title>
    <style type="text/css">
    .calendarBody
    {
        overflow: scroll;
        max-height: 500px;
    }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <table>
    <tbody>
        <tr>
        <td>
            This is a cell in the outer table.
        <div class="calendarBody">
            <table>
                <tbody>
                <tr>
                    <td>
                    This is a cell in the inner table.
                </td>
                    </tr>
            </tbody>
                </table>
        </div>
        </td>
    </tr>
    </tbody>
</table>
</body>
</html>

Ashish Joseph · Answer 4 · 2013-11-27T07:33:30.010

2

{max-height:200px, Overflow:auto}

Thanks to Srinivas Tamada, The above code did work for me.

edited Nov 27 '13 at 07:33

answered May 03 '11 at 10:00

Ashish Joseph

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 01 '12 at 07:47

1

Set max-height only and don't set the overflow. This way it will show scroll bar if content is more than max-height and shrinks if content is less than the max-height.

answered Nov 01 '12 at 07:47

Abdul Rauf

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score 1 · Answer 6 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

To reproduce:

(This crashes the whole page.)

<HTML>
<HEAD>
    <META content="IE=8" http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible"/>
</HEAD>

<BODY>
    look:
    
    <TABLE width="100%">
        <TR>
            <TD>
                <TABLE width="100%">
                    <TR>
                        <TD>
                            <DIV style="overflow-y: scroll; max-height: 100px;">
                                X
                            </DIV>
                        </TD>
                    </TR>
                </TABLE>
            </TD>
        </TR>
    </TABLE>
</BODY>
</HTML>

(Whereas this works fine...)

<HTML>
<HEAD>
    <META content="IE=8" http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible"/>
</HEAD>

<BODY>
    look:
    
    <TABLE width="100%">
        <TR>
            <TD>
                <TABLE width="100%">
                    <TR>
                        <TD>
                            <DIV style="overflow-y: scroll; max-height: 100px;">
                                The quick brown fox
                            </DIV>
                        </TD>
                    </TR>
                </TABLE>
            </TD>
        </TR>
    </TABLE>
</BODY>
</HTML>

(And, madly, so does this. [No content in the div at all.])

<HTML>
<HEAD>
    <META content="IE=8" http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible"/>
</HEAD>

<BODY>
    look:
    
    <TABLE width="100%">
        <TR>
            <TD>
                <TABLE width="100%">
                    <TR>
                        <TD>
                            <DIV style="overflow-y: scroll; max-height: 100px;">
                            </DIV>
                        </TD>
                    </TR>
                </TABLE>
            </TD>
        </TR>
    </TABLE>
</BODY>
</HTML>

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Aug 18 '11 at 18:57

Similar situation, a pre element with maxHeight set by js to fit in allotted space, width 100%, overflow auto. If the content is shorter than maxHeight and also fits horizontally, we're good. If you resize the window so the content no longer fits horizontally, a horizontal scrollbar appears, but the height of element immediately jumps to the full maxHeight, regardless of the height of the content.

Tried various forms of the css hack mentioned by Jeff, but didn't find anything like it that wasn't a js bad-parameter error.

Best I could find was to pick your poison for ie8: Either drop the maxHeight limit, so the element can be any height (best for my case), or set height rather than maxHeight, so it's always that tall even if the content itself is much shorter. Very not ideal. Wacked behavior is gone in ie9.

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Nov 17 '15 at 17:40

I found this : https://perishablepress.com/maximum-and-minimum-height-and-width-in-internet-explorer/

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 333px 1 for IE and all standards-compliant browsers:

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

and this works for me perfectly so I decided to share this.

IE8 overflow:auto with max-height

8 Answers8

To reproduce:

Linked