Please help with css footer placement?

Gentlemen;

I've created a class for a consistent footer

..footing {
position: absolute;
bottom: 0;
font-size: x-small;
text-align: center;
width: 100%;
}

and I use a single function to output the html to reference this.

It seems to work just as I intended for most of my pages. However, in
rare cases, when the content of the page is longer that the defined
position of the footer, the footer output will appear right through
the lower third of the page instead of at the bottom where it belongs.

Now, I've played with relative positioning but that causes the footer
to appear way too high when the pages are sparse or short. In those
cases I would like the footer to appear near or at the bottom of the
visual page.

Can someone please provise some guidance on how one can achieve what I
am attempting to do? That being deliver a consistently appearing
footer at the bottom of the visual page or below if the page happens
to be longer than the visual page?

Thanks in advance.

Bob