CSS 100% height with padding/margin

There is a new property in CSS3 that you can use to change the way the box model calculates width/height, it's called box-sizing.

By setting this property with the value "border-box" it makes whichever element you apply it to not stretch when you add a padding or border. If you define something with 100px width, and 10px padding, it will still be 100px wide.

box-sizing: border-box;

See here for browser support. It does not work for IE7 and lower, however, I believe that Dean Edward's IE7.js adds support for it. Enjoy :)

The better way is with the calc() property. So, your case would look like:

#myDiv {
    width: calc(100% - 10px);
    height: calc(100% - 10px);
    padding: 5px;
}

Simple, clean, no workarounds. Just make sure you don't forget the space between the values and the operator (eg (100%-5px) that will break the syntax. Enjoy!

I learned how to do these sort of things reading "PRO HTML and CSS Design Patterns". The display:block is the default display value for the div, but I like to make it explicit. The container has to be the right type; position attribute is fixed, relative, or absolute.

.stretchedToMargin {
  display: block;
  position:absolute;
  height:auto;
  bottom:0;
  top:0;
  left:0;
  right:0;
  margin-top:20px;
  margin-bottom:20px;
  margin-right:80px;
  margin-left:80px;
  background-color: green;
}

<div class="stretchedToMargin">
  Hello, world
</div>

Fiddle by Nooshu's comment

The solution is to NOT use height and width at all! Attach the inner box using top, left, right, bottom and then add margin.

.box {margin:8px; position:absolute; top:0; left:0; right:0; bottom:0}

<div class="box" style="background:black">
  <div class="box" style="background:green">
    <div class="box" style="background:lightblue">
      This will show three nested boxes. Try resizing browser to see they remain nested properly.
    </div>
  </div>
</div>