Aligning multiple smaller words with one bigger word? - html

Question

I am learning how to code HTML and CSS, and I decided to make my own website in the process.
My question is: how would I align smaller text to a bigger object, for example, links to different pages on my website neatly aligned under my full name with the links flush to the of the beginning and end of my full name?
I know describing it may have been a bit confusing, so here's an image of what I mean:
Any suggestions?
Thanks!

Answer 1

You can approximate the look and design regardless of the header length, but in the end, CSS doesn't offer as precise typographical tools as you'd need and you will have to nudge the percentages one way or another once you know the length of your actual text.
Sample Jsfiddle
HTML:
<div id="container">
<h1>Large Title Here Etc</h1>
<div id="sub">
<span>music</span>
<span>film</span>
<span>web</span>
<span>photo</span>
</div>
</div>
CSS:
body {
text-align: center;
}
#container {
display: inline-block;
}
h1 {
font-size: 2em;
}
#sub {
font-size: 1em;
display: table;
width: 120%;
box-sizing: border-box;
margin: 0 -10%;
}
#sub span {
display: table-cell;
padding: 0 2%;
}

Answer 2

links flush to the beginning and end of my full name
Get out of the habit of thinking this way as you design websites. This will lead to endless headaches and frustrations for you, as it depends on browser rendering (and possibly rendering bugs), the user's font size, the user's font, and loads of other factors you cannot control. Instead of going for 'pixel precision', the idea is simply to make it look as good as you can on most things.
When designing things like this, consider the markup first. What is the structure of what you're actually writing? In your linked image, Full Name looks to me like a header (perhaps h1), while menus like that are normally done as styled unordered lists (ul) these days. Below is an example of how I might make something similar to what is in your image.
Here is the markup:
<div id="container">
<h1>Full Name</h1>
<ul>
<li>music</li>
<li>film</li>
<li>web</li>
<li>photo</li>
</ul>
</div>
and the CSS used, with comments:
#container { border: 1px solid; }
h1 {
margin-bottom: 0;
text-align: center;
}
ul {
margin: 0.5em;
/* remove default padding inserted by browser */
padding-left: 0;
/* no bullets */
list-style-type: none;
/* this works on inline objects, not just text */
text-align: center;
}
li {
/* hybrid of inline and block; obeys text-align */
/* Also note this does not work in IE <9. Workarounds exist. */
display: inline-block;
padding: 3px;
}
And here is the end result: http://jsfiddle.net/3PLgz/1/