I have a page in which a header consists of three divs - one that\'s floated to the left, one that\'s floated to the right, and one that\'s in between them. I\'d like for th
Indeed, the important part is that the centered div come after the left and right divs in the markup. Check out this example, it uses margin-left: auto and margin-right: auto on the centered div, which causes it to be centered.
<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
#left
{
float: left;
border: solid 1px red;
}
#mid
{
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
border: solid 1px red;
}
#right
{
float: right;
border: solid 1px red;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="left">
left
</div>
<div id="right">
right
</div>
<div id="mid">
mid
</div>
</body>
</html>
Here's a JS Bin to test: http://jsbin.com/agewes/1/edit
If you have two floated divs, then you know the margins. The problem is that the float:right div should be put before the middle div. So basically you will have:
left-floated | right-floated | centered
Now, about the margins: usually you can just use margin:0 auto, right? The problem is that right now you know the values of the margins: floated divs! So you just need to use:
margin:0 right-floated-width 0 left-floated-width
That should work.
Meanwhile, a new toy is in town: flexbox. The support is fairly good (i.e. if you don't need to support lower than IE 10) and the ease of use is way over floats.
You can see a very good flexbox guide here. The example you need is right here.
The element with the centered content needs to be specified after both floated elements. After that, simply set the middle element to text-align: center. The text in the centered element will squeeze in between the floats.
See here: http://jsfiddle.net/calvintennant/wjjeR/
Usually you can use flexbox instead of floats:
https://jsfiddle.net/h0zaf4Lp/
HTML:
<div class="container">
<div>left</div>
<div class="center">center</div>
<div>right</div>
</div>
CSS:
.container {
display: flex;
}
.center {
flex-grow: 1;
}
A simple solution without having to change the order of the divs (sometimes we can not do this) could be an absolute positioning for the center div as follows:
.container {
position: relative;
}
.container div {
width: 200px;
background: red;
}
.left {
float: left;
}
.right {
float: right;
}
.center {
position: absolute;
top: 0;
left: 0;
right: 0;
margin: auto;
}
<div class="container">
<div class="left">left</div>
<div class="center">center</div>
<div class="right">right</div>
</div>
In some cases, you have a limitation and cannot change the page markup by moving the middle div after the right-floated div. In that case, follow these instructions:
position: relativeposition: absolute; left: [containerWidth - middle-width / 2]I hope you got the idea.