Fill remaining vertical space - only CSS
The modern way to achieve this is using CSS Flexbox (see the MDN Web Docs).
html, body {
height: 100%;
}
.wrapper {
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
width: 300px;
height: 100%;
}
.first {
height: 50px;
}
.second {
flex-grow: 1;
}
<div class="wrapper">
<div class="first" style="background:#b2efd8">First</div>
<div class="second" style="background:#80c7cd">Second</div>
</div>
You can use CSS Flexbox instead another display value, The Flexbox Layout (Flexible Box) module aims at providing a more efficient way to lay out, align and distribute space among items in a container, even when their size is unknown and/or dynamic.
Example
/* CONTAINER */
#wrapper
{
width:300px;
height:300px;
display: -webkit-box; /* OLD - iOS 6-, Safari 3.1-6 */
display: -moz-box; /* OLD - Firefox 19- (buggy but mostly works) */
display: -ms-flexbox; /* TWEENER - IE 10 */
display: -webkit-flex; /* NEW - Chrome */
display: flex; /* NEW, Spec - Opera 12.1, Firefox 20+ */
-ms-flex-direction: column;
-moz-flex-direction: column;
-webkit-flex-direction: column;
flex-direction: column;
}
/* SOME ITEM CHILD ELEMENTS */
#first
{
width:300px;
height: 200px;
background-color:#F5DEB3;
}
#second
{
width:300px;
background-color: #9ACD32;
-webkit-box-flex: 1; /* OLD - iOS 6-, Safari 3.1-6 */
-moz-box-flex: 1; /* OLD - Firefox 19- */
-webkit-flex: 1; /* Chrome */
-ms-flex: 1; /* IE 10 */
flex: 1; /* NEW, */
}
jsfiddle Example
If you want to have full support for old browsers like IE9 or below, you will have to use a polyfills like flexy, this polyfill enable support for Flexbox model but only for 2012 spec of flexbox model.
Recently I found another polyfill to help you with Internet Explorer 8 & 9 or any older browser that not have support for flexbox model, I still have not tried it but I leave the link here
You can find a usefull and complete Guide to Flexbox model by Chris Coyer here
You can do this with position:absolute;
on the #second
div like this :
FIDDLE
CSS :
#wrapper{
position:relative;
}
#second {
position:absolute;
top:200px;
bottom:0;
left:0;
width:300px;
background-color:#9ACD32;
}
EDIT : Alternative solution
Depending on your layout and the content you have in those divs, you could make it much more simple and with less markup like this :
FIDDLE
HTML :
<div id="wrapper">
<div id="first"></div>
</div>
CSS :
#wrapper {
height:100%;
width:300px;
background-color:#9ACD32;
}
#first {
background-color:#F5DEB3;
height: 200px;
}