Why no min/max height?

Question

Since I've started creating responsive content with Edge, once thing has really bugged me - and that's the omission of a Min H and Max H alongside Min W and Max W. I've been told it's not necessary as height can be constrained to width, but I still find myself needing it.
Two scenarios I've frequently come across:
• An object is set to 100% width. When a window is resized to a landscape orientation, I want an object's maximum width dictated by it's height to prevent it taking up too much space in the layout. For example, in portrait layout it may be W100%, H10% - turn that to landscape and it might become W100%, H60% if I've constrained the proportions. I want to be able to cap it at say H30%, so after a certain point it's just the width that changes and not the height.
• I have a series of square images nested within a horizontal scrollable div. I want these images to stay in proportion but always fill to H100% of the container div, regardless of its shape (portrait, landscape). It seems to simple but I just can't make it work without a min/max H functionality.
Can anyone explain why this feature is missing?
Thanks

Answer 1

As you know, IE doesn't support min/max-height/width.
With regard to HEIGHT, you can work around IE's lack of support for min-height since the way that IE deals with an explicit height is as if it were min-height.  For example, if you have this CSS:
#foo { min-height:250px; }
you can *hack* a fix for IE like this -
#foo {
     min-height:250px;
     _height:250px;
The "_height" style is ignored by all browsers except IE<8.  For those versions of IE that 'read' that style, they interpret it as 'height' and since IE treats an explicit height value as if it were 'min-height' you are set.  Another way (and a cleaner way in my opinion) would be to add an IE conditional comment to the page, e.g.,
<!--[if lte IE 7]>
<style>
#foo {
     height:250px;
</style>
<![endif]-->
That takes care of min-height.
The solutions for max-height or min/max-width are not so simple.  Google for IE CSS calculations to see how you might approach them.