[Sam I Am]

Hello all,

I was wondering how one would go about centering an object or text without using W3C's depreciated HTML... I know there are lots of ways for like
<CENTER>
<DIV align="center">
<TD align="center">

but all of these methods are now scheduled to be axed... how do i get around this situation?

Thanks...

[Millennium]

For an inline object (text, images, etc.), use CSS to set its containing block's text-align property to center.

For a block-level object (P, DIV, and such) set the left and right margins to auto. The standard defines that when left and right margins are both set to auto, they're made equal (which centers the object). You can do this by manually setting margin-left:auto and margin-right:auto, or you can use the shortand "margin" property if you want.

Unfortunately, the auto-margin trick doesn't work with IE4/Windows. If this doesn't bother you, then fine. Otherwise, put your object in another tag that has text-align:center on it.

[ism]

Sam I am: in addition to milleniums answer (which is correct) you may want to check out these resources:

http://bluerobot.com/web/css/center1.html
http://bluerobot.com/web/css/center2.html

You may also want to subscribe to this newly created list for all your future css needs:


http://two.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/css-discuss

Ain't css fun?

[Raman]

Originally posted by Sam I Am:
<STRONG>depreciated</STRONG>

its deprecated, not depreciated. and just because it's deprecated doesn't mean that you are not allowed to use it and browsers won't understand it. it just means that they are recommending that you stop using it as soon as technically feasable.

i suppose you're already coding css 2.0 even though most browsers still doen't understand it and it's been out for a while already.

bottom line: don't worry about it.

[calimehtar]

Actually in some cases you may find that a newer browser really doesn't understand the deprecated version. IE 6 windows, IE 5 mac and Netscape 6 all understand margin: auto, so you won't be totally out in the cold. If you're writing xhtml and using the doctype definition and also using img {display: block} to work around a little quirk in image displays you'll find that Mac IE 5, in particular doesn't understand &lt;center&gt;. In this case you'll have to do both. I usually ignore browsers older than 4.0 and do something like:

in the html: &lt;div class="center"&gt;

in the css: .center {text-align: center; margin: auto}. This should work in Netscape 4-6 and IE 4-6. Theoretically.

Welcome to the weird, wild world of supporting Netscape 4 and w3c standards simultaneously.