What I am trying to accomplish is having a fixed-width first div and a fluid second div which will fill up the rest width of the parent div's width.
<div class='clearfix'>
<div style='float:left; width:100px;'>some content</div>
<div style='float:left'>some more content</div>
</div>
and on this one everything seems alright and fluid.
<div style='display:table'>
<div style='display:table-cell; width:100px;'>some content</div>
<div style='display:table-cell'>some more content</div>
</div>
I want to go ahead with the second one but i feel like the second example will give me headaches in the future.
Could you offer some suggestions or insights?
display: table-cell
is perfectly fine to use, with just one downside..
It doesn't work in IE7 (or IE6, but who cares?): http://caniuse.com/#search=css-table
If you don't need to support IE7, then feel free to use it.
IE7 still has some usage, but you should check your Analytics, and then make a decision.
To answer your specific use case, you can do it without display: table-cell
, provided that you don't need the height
to adjust based on content:
<div class='clearfix'>
<div style='float:left; width:100px; background:red'>some content</div>
<div style='overflow:hidden; background:#ccc'>some more content</div>
</div>
(why overflow: hidden
? With: http://jsfiddle.net/g6yB4/3/ vs without: http://jsfiddle.net/g6yB4/4/)