How to disable margin-collapsing?

You can also use the good old micro clearfix for this.

#container::before, #container::after{
    content: ' ';
    display: table;
}

See updated fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/XB9wX/97/

There are two main types of margin collapse:

• Collapsing margins between adjacent elements
• Collapsing margins between parent and child elements

Using a padding or border will prevent collapse only in the latter case. Also, any value of overflow different from its default (visible) applied to the parent will prevent collapse. Thus, both overflow: auto and overflow: hidden will have the same effect. Perhaps the only difference when using hidden is the unintended consequence of hiding content if the parent has a fixed height.

Other properties that, once applied to the parent, can help fix this behaviour are:

• float: left / right
• position: absolute
• display: inline-block / flex

You can test all of them here: http://jsfiddle.net/XB9wX/1/.

I should add that, as usual, Internet Explorer is the exception. More specifically, in IE 7 margins do not collapse when some kind of layout is specified for the parent element, such as width.

Sources: Sitepoint's article Collapsing Margins

overflow:hidden prevents collapsing margins but it's not free of side effects - namely it... hides overflow.

Apart form this and what you've mentioned you just have to learn live with it and learn for this day when they are actually useful (comes every 3 to 5 years).

One neat trick to disable margin collapsing that has no visual impact, as far as I know, is setting the padding of the parent to 0.05px:

.parentClass {
    padding: 0.05px;
}

The padding is no longer 0 so collapsing won't occur anymore but at the same time the padding is small enough that visually it will round down to 0.

If some other padding is desired, then apply padding only to the "direction" in which margin collapsing is not desired, for example padding-top: 0.05px;.

Working example:

.noCollapse {
  padding: 0.05px;
}

.parent {
  background-color: red;
  width: 150px;
}

.children {
  margin-top: 50px;

  background-color: lime;      
  width: 100px;
  height: 100px;
}

<h3>Border collapsing</h3>
<div class="parent">
  <div class="children">
  </div>
</div>

<h3>No border collapsing</h3>
<div class="parent noCollapse">
  <div class="children">
  </div>
</div>

Edit: changed the value from 0.1 to 0.05. As Chris Morgan mentioned in a comment bellow, and from this small test, it seems that indeed Firefox takes the 0.1px padding into consideration. Though, 0.05px seemes to do the trick.