[thelist] Second stupid CSS question of the evening

[Brian Cummiskey]

M. Seyon wrote:

> Message from Christian (10/26/2004 10:13 PM)
>
>> Dear list,
>>
>> So...how does one "center" an entire page in CSS?  I have already 
>> used absolute positioning for certain DIVs - didn't really think it 
>> through, perhaps - am I going to have to totally redo things?
>
>
> Theoretically you use margin: auto but IE doesn't support this.
>
> Read here - http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=CenteringBlockElement 
> - for more info and a workaround.
>

I use a work-around like this:

body{ 
	text-align: center; /* centers board in MSIE */
}

#mainwrapperdiv{ 
	margin: 2em auto 2em auto; /* centers the box, applies a 2em gap all around.  adjust to fit your needs  */
	text-align: left; /* re-aligns the text to left, to negate the centering above */	
	width: 98%; /* or whatever you want here.  don't use 100% though, because it will cause some horizontal scroll bars in most browsers.  leave width: out all together if you just want to control it via margin width.
}