Vertically center element without it becoming inaccessible offscreen - html

Question

I'm trying to center an element in the middle of the page. I can center it just fine, but if I resize the page vertically until the view height is smaller than the centered element, the element goes offscreen vertically without a scrollbar. You can see a demonstration of the issue here:
http://codepen.io/mse/pen/BWayXV
* {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}
html, body {
height: 100%;
}
.outer {
text-align: center;
position: relative;
top: 50%;
transform: translateY(-50%);
}
.inner {
display: inline-block;
width: 400px;
height: 800px;
background: grey;
}
<div class="outer">
<div class="inner"></div>
</div>
I should mention that I have tried a couple of other methods of vertical centering, including flexbox, and I'm still running into the same issue. Is there a way to solve this problem with this method of vertical centering, or is there at least a vertical centering method that does not have this issue?

Answer 1

Try this
* {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}
html, body {
height: 100%;
}
.outer {
display:flex;
justify-content:center;
align-items:center;
}
.inner {
background: #ccc;
width: 400px;
height: 600px
}
<div class="outer">
<div class="inner"> I'm a block-level element centered vertically within my parent.</div>
</div>
More info: https://css-tricks.com/centering-css-complete-guide/
CSS VH center generator: http://howtocenterincss.com/

Answer 2

This should work
* {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}
html, body {
height: 100vh;
}
.outer {
height: 100%;
display: flex;
justify-content: center;
align-items: center;
}
.inner {
width: 400px;
height: 800px;
background: grey;
}
<div class="outer">
<div class="inner"></div>
</div>

Answer 3

You can try to limit the size of your inner element. If you define size by a fixed px amount it will start scrolling as soon as the screen becomes smaller than that px amount. If you are ok with changing the height of the inner element you could use vh or you can implement #media queries to decrease the size on smaller screens. Here#s an example:
.inner { height: 100vh; /* 100 view height percentage*/}
Note: The viewport-percentage lengths are relative to the size of the initial containing block and affected by the presence of scrollbars on the viewport.