Centering elements in Firefox and IE

akeyworth · December 13th, 2007, 04:44 PM

Hi,

Probably a familiar issue here, but I've tried applying the solutions I've found by searching, and still nothing.

I want to center elements in a Web page (say, my Header and the following menu bar). I can get it to work easily for IE by using "text-align" in the <div> tags, but then it doesn't work for Firefox. I've tried replacing them with "margin: 0;" and "margin: auto;", as suggested, but it doesn't work. I CAN get it to work if I set the "width" property to 100%, but since I want to surround the content of the header and menu bar with a gray box, I don't want it to stretch all across the screen: so, when I set it to an absolute measurement (say, 1200px), it just aligns left again.

Suggestions?

Here's my code:

- HTML

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<LINK href="style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"></LINK>
</head>

<body>

<div class="PageWrapper">
     <div class="ContentWrapper">
         <div class="Header">
            <img src="images/TopBanner7.png" width="1200" height="260" />
        </div>
    </div>
     <div class="ContentWrapper">
        <div class="MenuBar">
         </div>
     </div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

- CSS

.PageWrapper {
    text-align:center;
        - OR -
        margin: auto;
    width:100%;
}

.ContentWrapper {
    width:1200px;
    padding:3px;
    margin:3px;
    border: solid;
    border-width: 2px;
    border-color:#333333;
    background-color:#666666;
    text-align:center;
        - OR -
        margin: auto;
}

.Header {

    text-align:center;
        - OR -
        margin: auto;

    height: 260px;
    width: 1200px;
}
.MenuBar {
    background-image:url(images/ButtonBarBackground.png);
    text-align:center;
        - OR -
        margin: auto;

    height: 60px;
    width: 1200px;
}

Thanks,

Andy

chroniclemaster1 · December 19th, 2007, 12:00 AM

Using both margin:auto; and text-align:center, it seems to be working pretty well. I removed the width 100% or set it to just about anything else. Here's my code.

-HTML

Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<LINK href="style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"></LINK>
</head>

<body>

<div class="PageWrapper">
     <div class="ContentWrapper">
         <div class="Header">
            <img src="images/TopBanner7.png" width="1200" height="260" />
        </div>
    </div>
     <div class="ContentWrapper">
        <div class="MenuBar">
        Stuff inside the menu bar.
        </div>
     </div>
    <h3>Here's my body content</h3>

    <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. Nam liber tempor cum soluta nobis eleifend option congue nihil imperdiet doming id quod mazim placerat facer possim assum. Typi non habent claritatem insitam; est usus legentis in iis qui facit eorum claritatem. Investigationes demonstraverunt lectores legere me lius quod ii legunt saepius. Claritas est etiam processus dynamicus, qui sequitur mutationem consuetudium lectorum. Mirum est notare quam littera gothica, quam nunc putamus parum claram, anteposuerit litterarum formas humanitatis per seacula quarta decima et quinta decima. Eodem modo typi, qui nunc nobis videntur parum clari, fiant sollemnes in futurum.</p>

    <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. Nam liber tempor cum soluta nobis eleifend option congue nihil imperdiet doming id quod mazim placerat facer possim assum. Typi non habent claritatem insitam; est usus legentis in iis qui facit eorum claritatem. Investigationes demonstraverunt lectores legere me lius quod ii legunt saepius. Claritas est etiam processus dynamicus, qui sequitur mutationem consuetudium lectorum. Mirum est notare quam littera gothica, quam nunc putamus parum claram, anteposuerit litterarum formas humanitatis per seacula quarta decima et quinta decima. Eodem modo typi, qui nunc nobis videntur parum clari, fiant sollemnes in futurum.</p>

</div>

    <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. Nam liber tempor cum soluta nobis eleifend option congue nihil imperdiet doming id quod mazim placerat facer possim assum. Typi non habent claritatem insitam; est usus legentis in iis qui facit eorum claritatem. Investigationes demonstraverunt lectores legere me lius quod ii legunt saepius. Claritas est etiam processus dynamicus, qui sequitur mutationem consuetudium lectorum. Mirum est notare quam littera gothica, quam nunc putamus parum claram, anteposuerit litterarum formas humanitatis per seacula quarta decima et quinta decima. Eodem modo typi, qui nunc nobis videntur parum clari, fiant sollemnes in futurum.</p>

</body>
</html>

-CSS

Code:

.PageWrapper {
    text-align:center;
    margin: auto;
}

.ContentWrapper {
    width:1200px;
    padding:3px;
    margin:3px;
    border: solid;
    border-width: 2px;
    border-color:#333333;
    background-color:#666666;
    text-align:center;
    margin: auto;
}

.Header {

    text-align:center;
    margin: auto;
    height: 260px;
    width: 1200px;
}

.MenuBar {
    background-image:url(images/ButtonBarBackground.png);
    text-align:center;
    margin: auto;
    height: 60px;
    width: 1200px;
}

body {
width: 200px;
}

-------------------------

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.
-Johann von Goethe

When Two Hearts Race... Both Win.
-Dove Chocolate Wrapper

Chroniclemaster1, Founder of www.EarthChronicle.com
A Growing History of our Planet, by our Planet, for our Planet.

chroniclemaster1 · December 19th, 2007, 12:02 AM

:( And yes, centering is embarassingly difficult to do in CSS.

-------------------------

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.
-Johann von Goethe

When Two Hearts Race... Both Win.
-Dove Chocolate Wrapper

Chroniclemaster1, Founder of www.EarthChronicle.com
A Growing History of our Planet, by our Planet, for our Planet.