Ie Display: Table-Cell Child Ignores Height: 100%

IE display: table-cell child ignores height: 100%

Unfortunately, the effect of percentage values for height on display: table-row and display: table-cell elements is undefined according to the spec:

CSS 2.1 does not define how the height of table cells and table rows is calculated when their height is specified using percentage values.

So while a browser may claim to offer full support for table layout, certain aspects such as percentage heights may not be consistently implemented across all browsers because there is no correct behavior. You could try raising an issue on Microsoft Connect in hopes that they will change the behavior to be interoperable, but in the meantime you will need to find a different workaround (and even then you can't guarantee the behavior will remain interoperable, even in other browsers).

To make matters worse, I just tested and this affects all versions of IE up to and including 11, which means an IE-specific hack will fall short here. If you need to use a CSS table layout, as evidenced by the fact that you need to support IE8, then a pure CSS workaround is probably not feasible.

height:100% inside table-cell not working on Firefox and IE

For height:100% to work, all parent containers must be height:100%. If you notice, your .table-cell styles do not have height:100%.

Adding this style fixes the issue in Firefox:

.table-cell {
    display:table-cell;
    vertical-align: middle;
    width:100%;
    height:100%;
}

As an alternative, adding the image to your HTML rather than as a CSS background-image might also work.

body, html {    margin:0;    padding:0;    height:100%;}.table {    display:table;    width:100%;    height:100%;}.table-cell {    display:table-cell;    vertical-align: middle;    width:100%;}.content {    height: 100%;    display: block;    overflow: hidden;    position: relative;    background-size:cover;}
.content img {    width:100%;    height:100%;}

<div class="table">    <div class="table-cell">        <div class="content">            <img src="http://spaceinimages.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2012/11/solar_eclipse_corona/12092636-3-eng-GB/Solar_eclipse_corona_node_full_image.jpg"/>        </div>    </div></div>

<div>
    <a href="#">test</a>
</div>

div { display: table; height: 100px; border: 4px solid #000; width: 300px;}
a { display: table-cell; border: 4px solid #0f0; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; }