Align contents inside a div

Hemanshu_Bhojak_51927 0
Viewed 538956

I use css style text-align to align contents inside a container in HTML. This works fine while the content is text or the browser is IE. But otherwise it does not work.

Also as the name suggests it is used basically to align text. The align property has been deprecated long back.

Is there any other way to align contents in html?

text-align css html
8 Answers

text-align aligns text and other inline content. It doesn't align block element children.

To do that, you want to give the element you want aligned a width, with ‘auto’ left and right margins. This is the standards-compliant way that works everywhere except IE5.x.

<div style="width: 50%; margin: 0 auto;">Hello</div>

For this to work in IE6, you need to make sure Standards Mode is on by using a suitable DOCTYPE.

If you really need to support IE5/Quirks Mode, which these days you shouldn't really, it is possible to combine the two different approaches to centering:

<div style="text-align: center">
    <div style="width: 50%; margin: 0 auto; text-align: left">Hello</div>
</div>

(Obviously, styles are best put inside a stylesheet, but the inline version is illustrative.)

user_189360

Below are the methods which have always worked for me

  1. By using flex layout model:

Set the display of the parent div to display: flex; and the you can align the child elements inside the div using the justify-content: center; (to align the items on main axis) and align-items: center; (to align the items on cross axis).

If you have more than one child element and want to control the way they are arranged (column/rows), then you can also add flex-direction property.

Working example:

.parent {
  align-items: center;
  border: 1px solid black;
  display: flex;
  justify-content: center;
  height: 250px;
  width: 250px;
}

.child {
  border: 1px solid black;
  height: 50px;
  width: 50px;
}
<div class="parent">
  <div class="child"></div>
</div>

2. (older method) Using position, margin properties and fixed size

Working example:

.parent {
  border: 1px solid black;
  height: 250px;
  position: relative;
  width: 250px;
}

.child {
  border: 1px solid black;
  margin: auto;
  top: 0;
  bottom: 0;
  left: 0;
  right: 0;
  height: 50px;
  position: absolute;
  width: 50px;
}
<div class="parent">
  <div class="child"></div>
</div>

user_44423650

All the answers talk about horizontal align.

For vertical aligning multiple content elements, take a look at this approach:

<div style="display: flex; align-items: center; width: 200px; height: 140px; padding: 10px 40px; border: solid 1px black;">
    <div>
        <p>Paragraph #1</p>
        <p>Paragraph #2</p>
    </div>
</div>

user_24775820
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