Make outer div be automatically the same height as its floating content

Question

I want the outer div, which is black to wrap its divs floating within it. I dont want to use style=\'height: 200px in the div

Answer 1

First of all you don't use width=300px that's an attribute setting for the tag not CSS, use width: 300px; instead.

I would suggest applying the clearfix technique on the #outerdiv. Clearfix is a general solution to clear 2 floating divs so the parent div will expand to accommodate the 2 floating divs.

<div id='outerdiv' class='clearfix' style='width:600px; background-color: black;'>
    <div style='width:300px; float: left;'>
        <p>xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx</p>
    </div>

    <div style='width:300px; float: left;'>
        <p>zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz</p>
    </div>
</div>

Here is an example of your situation and what Clearfix does to resolve it.