I\'ve seen a million questions about how to center a block element and there seem to be a couple popular ways to do it, but they all rely on fixed pixels widths. Then either
I think you can use display: inline-block
on the element you want to center and set text-align: center;
on its parent. This definitely center the div on all screen sizes.
Here you can see a fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/PwC4T/2/ I add the code here for completeness.
HTML
<div id="container">
<div id="main">
<div id="somebackground">
Hi
</div>
</div>
</div>
CSS
#container
{
text-align: center;
}
#main
{
display: inline-block;
}
#somebackground
{
text-align: left;
background-color: red;
}
For vertical centering, I "dropped" support for some older browsers in favour of display: table;
, which absolutely reduce code, see this fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/jFAjY/1/
Here is the code (again) for completeness:
HTML
<body>
<div id="table-container">
<div id="container">
<div id="main">
<div id="somebackground">
Hi
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
CSS
body, html
{
height: 100%;
}
#table-container
{
display: table;
text-align: center;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
}
#container
{
display: table-cell;
vertical-align: middle;
}
#main
{
display: inline-block;
}
#somebackground
{
text-align: left;
background-color: red;
}
The advantage of this approach? You don't have to deal with any percantage, it also handles correctly the <video>
tag (html5), which has two different sizes (one during load, one after load, you can't fetch the tag size 'till video is loaded).
The downside is that it drops support for some older browser (I think IE8 won't handle this correctly)
This might sound really simplistic...
But this will center the div inside the div, exactly in the center in relation to left and right margin or parent container, but you can adjust percentage symmetrically on left and right.
margin-right: 10%;
margin-left: 10%;
Then you can adjust % to make it as wide as you want it.
Centering both horizontally and vertically
Actually, having the height and width in percents makes centering it even easier. You just offset the left and top by half of the area not occupied by the div.
So if you height is 40%, 100% - 40% = 60%. So you want 30% above and below. Then top: 30% does the trick.
See the example here: http://dabblet.com/gist/5957545
Centering only horizontally
Use inline-block. The other answer here will not work for IE 8 and below, however. You must use a CSS hack or conditional styles for that. Here is the hack version:
See the example here: http://dabblet.com/gist/5957591
.inlineblock {
display: inline-block;
zoom: 1;
display*: inline; /* ie hack */
}
By using media queries you can combine two techniques to achive the effect you want. The only complication is height. You use a nested div to switch between % width and
http://dabblet.com/gist/5957676
@media (max-width: 1000px) {
.center{}
.center-inner{left:25%;top:25%;position:absolute;width:50%;height:300px;background:#f0f;text-align:center;max-width:500px;max-height:500px;}
}
@media (min-width: 1000px) {
.center{left:50%;top:25%;position:absolute;}
.center-inner{width:500px;height:100%;margin-left:-250px;height:300px;background:#f0f;text-align:center;max-width:500px;max-height:500px;}
}
From Chris Coyier's article on centering percentage width elements:
Instead of using negative margins, you use negative
translate()
transforms.
.center {
position: absolute;
left: 50%;
top: 50%;
/*
Nope =(
margin-left: -25%;
margin-top: -25%;
*/
/*
Yep!
*/
transform: translate(-50%, -50%);
/*
Not even necessary really.
e.g. Height could be left out!
*/
width: 40%;
height: 50%;
}
Codepen
EDIT :
http://codepen.io/gcyrillus/pen/daCyu
So for a popup, you have to use position:fixed , display:table property and max-width with em or rem values :)
with this CSS basis :
#popup {
position:fixed;
width:100%;
height:100%;
display:table;
pointer-events:none;
}
#popup > div {
display:table-cell;
vertical-align:middle;
}
#popup p {
width:80%;
max-width:20em;
margin:auto;
pointer-events:auto;
}
Something like this could be it?
<div class="random">
SOMETHING
</div>
body{
text-align: center;
}
.random{
width: 60%;
margin: auto;
background-color: yellow;
display:block;
}
DEMO: http://jsfiddle.net/t5Pp2/2/
Edit: adding display:block
doesn't ruin the thing, so...
You can also set the margin to: margin: 0 auto 0 auto;
just to be sure it centers only this way not from the top too.