How to style a div to be a responsive square?

I want my div to adapt its height to always equal its width. The width is percental. When the parent's width decreases, the box should decrease by keeping its aspect ratio.

How to do this is CSS?

Works on almost all browsers.

You can try giving padding-bottom as a percentage.

<div style="height:0;width:20%;padding-bottom:20%;background-color:red">
<div>
Content goes here
</div>
</div>

The outer div is making a square and inner div contains the content. This solution worked for me many times.

Here's a jsfiddle

To achieve what you are looking for you can use the viewport-percentage length vw.

Here is a quick example I made on jsfiddle.

HTML:

<div class="square">
    <h1>This is a Square</h1>
</div>

CSS:

.square {
    background: #000;
    width: 50vw;
    height: 50vw;
}
.square h1 {
    color: #fff;
}

I am sure there are many other ways to do this but this way seemed the best to me.

HTML

<div class='square-box'>
    <div class='square-content'>
        <h3>test</h3>
    </div>
</div>

CSS

.square-box{
    position: relative;
    width: 50%;
    overflow: hidden;
    background: #4679BD;
}
.square-box:before{
    content: "";
    display: block;
    padding-top: 100%;
}
.square-content{
    position:  absolute;
    top: 0;
    left: 0;
    bottom: 0;
    right: 0;
    color: white;
    text-align: center;
}

http://jsfiddle.net/38Tnx/1425/

It is as easy as specifying a padding bottom the same size as the width in percent. So if you have a width of 50%, just use this example below

id or class{
    width: 50%;
    padding-bottom: 50%;
}

Here is a jsfiddle http://jsfiddle.net/kJL3u/2/

Edited version with responsive text: http://jsfiddle.net/kJL3u/394

Another way is to use a transparent 1x1.png with width: 100%, height: auto in a div and absolutely positioned content within it:

html:

<div>
    <img src="1x1px.png">
    <h1>FOO</h1>
</div>

css:

div {
    position: relative;
    width: 50%;
}

img {
    width: 100%;
    height: auto;
}

h1 {
    position: absolute;
    top: 10px;
    left: 10px;
}

Fidle: http://jsfiddle.net/t529bjwc/

This is what I came up with. Here is a fiddle.

First, I need three wrapper elements for both a square shape and centered text.

<div><div><div>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit,
sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat
volutpat.</div></div></div>

This is the stylecheet. It makes use of two techniques, one for square shapes and one for centered text.

body > div {
    position:relative;
    height:0;
    width:50%; padding-bottom:50%;
}

body > div > div {
    position:absolute; top:0;
    height:100%; width:100%;
    display:table;
    border:1px solid #000;
    margin:1em;
}

body > div > div > div{
    display:table-cell;
    vertical-align:middle; text-align:center;
    padding:1em;
}