Using Margin:Auto to Vertically-Align a Div

.container {
    display: table;
    height: 100%;
    position: absolute;
    overflow: hidden;
    width: 100%;
}
.helper {
    #position: absolute;
    #top: 50%;
    display: table-cell;
    vertical-align: middle;
}
.content {
    #position: relative;
    #top: -50%;
    margin: 0 auto;
    width: 200px;
    border: 1px solid orange;
}

<div class="container">
    <div class="helper">
        <div class="content">
            <p>stuff</p>
        </div>
    </div>
</div

Why doesn't margin: auto center an element vertically?

As mentioned, this behavior is specified in section 10.6.2 of CSS2.1, and has remained unchanged from CSS2.

Block boxes are stacked vertically from top to bottom in normal flow. Furthermore, vertical margins may collapse, and only do so under certain circumstances (in your demo, the border on the parent element will prevent any margins on the child element from collapsing with its own). If you only have one such block box, and the height of the containing block is auto, then its top and bottom margins will be zero anyway. But if you have more than one block box in the same flow, or even out-of-flow boxes affecting the layout of in-flow boxes (in the case of clearance for example), how would you expect auto margins to resolve for those in-flow boxes?

This is why auto left and right margins are likewise zeroed out for inline elements (including atomic inlines) and floats (though horizontal margins never collapse). Inline-level boxes are laid along line boxes, and floats too obey unique layout rules.

Absolutely positioned boxes are a different story: since they are never aware of any other boxes in the same positioning context as themselves, auto top and bottom margins can be calculated for them with respect to their containing blocks without having to worry about any other boxes ever interfering.

Flexbox is also a different story: what sets flex layout apart from block layout is that flex items are by definition always aware of other flex items in the same flex formatting context, including the fact that there are none. In particular, neither can floats intrude into the flex container, nor can you float flex items to subvert this (although you can still remove a child element from flex layout completely with absolute positioning). Margins behave very differently with flex items due in part to this. See sections 4.2, 9.5 and 9.6.

Vertical Auto Margin within a Div

Here is a simple Solution for vertical aligning, using Pure CSS without fixing any top-margin, top-padding. so its totally responcive.

See this Working Fiddle

HTML: (Same)

<div id="panel">
    <div id="content">
    </div>
</div>

CSS:

html, body
{
    height: 100%;
    background-color: #273034;
    margin: 0;
}

#panel
{
    height: 100%;
    width: 380px;
    margin: 0 auto;
    background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.3);
}

/*this is new*/
#panel:before
{
    content: '';
    height: 100%;
    margin-left: -5px;
    vertical-align: middle;
    display: inline-block;
}

#content
{
    vertical-align: middle;     /*this is new*/
    display: inline-block;    /*this is new*/
    height: 100px;
    width: 100%;    /*this is new*/
    background-color: rgba(117,169,56,0.9);
}

Vertical align any inline element in any div using margin-auto

margin: auto does not work for top and bottom. If margin-top: auto or margin-bottom: auto is specified, their used value is 0. Here's an article about how you can achieve vertical centering.

Vertical centering of an element with CSS (margin-top, top)

You don't have fixed width and height (fluid). So you can't make the div in center vertically just using the CSS you mentioned in your post. You need to go with javascript or jQuery to achieve that. I have done this before, so I am just linking it here. https://stackoverflow.com/a/15293191/1577396

---

As specified in W3C, the margin properties including margin-top and margin-bottom refers the width of the containing block (not the height), if set in percentages.

So, you can't align a fluid container vertically using margin-top and margin-bottom as the case in fixed dimension container.

margin auto not working after vertical aligning

To center both vertically and horizontally following your attempt, try this:

// assumed positioned element
top: 50%;
left: 50%;
transform: translate(-50%, -50%);

Reference, and another good resource.

Using Margin: auto; is not centering div

Okay, the way I fixed it is by changing the HTML and CSS

From <div class="col-md-3 sub admin"> to <div class="col-sm-3 admin"> I'm not totally sure if that contributed, but ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Then I changed the CSS to

.users {
    width: -webkit-fit-content;
    width: -moz-fit-content;
    width: fit-content;
    margin: auto;

}

.admin {
    max-width: 410px;
    margin-left: 10px;
    margin-top: 5px;
    margin-bottom: 5px; 
    border-style: solid;
    border-width: 1px;
    border-color: grey;
    box-shadow: 2px 2px 1px grey;
    background: white;
    background: -webkit-linear-gradient(#fff , #F1F1F1);
    background: -o-linear-gradient(#fff , #F1F1F1);
    background: -moz-linear-gradient(#fff , #F1F1F1);
    background: linear-gradient(#fff , #F1F1F1);
}

The only problems are that it looks a bit funky on tablet sized screens, and that it's not totally centralised. However, it works for now.

---

Related Topics