Placing a text over an image with HTML and CSS - html

Question

I have a div containing a title text and an image.
With the code below, the title is showing just above the image.
HTML code:
<div class="thumbnail">
<div class="text">
<center>Heading</center>
</div>
<div class="image">
<img src="sample.png">
</div>
</div>
I would like to align the title so that it will appear on the center (vertically and horizontally) of the image.
How can I achieve that using HTML and CSS?

Answer 1

You could remove the image tag and make the image be the background of the container div.
HTML
<div class="text">
Heading
</div>
CSS
.text {
background-image: url('sample.jpg');
text-align: center;
}
EDIT: I don't want to sell it as my perfect answer, but I realized I missed the vertical alignment, and as similar solutions have already been provided here in comments and answers, let me just provide you with a good source of info below. The point is that you could use vertical-align:middle if you used span or other inline element, but with div, you have to use other tricks like position:absolute and minus margins.
Source: http://phrogz.net/css/vertical-align/index.html

Answer 2

Your markup is mostly correct with the exception of using the center element and you do not need to wrap the img element in a div.
Here is some example markup:
<div class="thumbnail">
<h1>Heading</h1>
<img src="sample.png">
</div>
And its corresponding CSS:
.thumbnail {
position:relative;
}
.thumbnail h1 {
text-align:center;
position:absolute;top:50%;left:0;width:100%;
margin-top:-20px; /*make the negative top margin = half your h1 element height */
}
You could always use an element other than an h1 to hold your title. This just depends on your preference.

Answer 3

The following might help you.
HTML:
<div class="thumbnail">
<div class="text">
Heading
</div>
</div>
CSS:
.text {
background-image: url('http://cs616623.vk.me/v616623331/7991/vPKjXbo-c7o.jpg');
width: 320px;
height: 240px;
line-height: 240px;
vertical-align: middle;
text-align: center;
font-size: 48px;
}
Take into account that in this approach you would have to set manually the height and the width of your text element. Moreover, the height should be duplicated in the line-height in order for vertical alignment to work correctly.
You could test and change the code in the corresponding JSFiddle or just check the full-screen result.

Answer 4

I wouldn't recommend using lineheight to vertically align the text(as some answers suggest) solely because if the header is to long and spans over across two rows it would look terrible.
What I would do is to absolute position the heading and then use display: table-cell to vertical align it.
Note that to be able to use this solution you have to specify an height for the heading.
HTML
<div class="thumbnail">
<div class="text">
<h1>Heading</h1>
</div>
<div class="image">
<img src="http://placehold.it/350x250" />
</div>
</div>
CSS
.thumbnail{
position: relative;
display: inline-block;
}
.text{
position:absolute;
top: 0px;
left: 0px;
width: 350px;
}
.text h1{
height: 250px;
display: table-cell;
vertical-align: middle;
text-align: center;
width: 350px;
color: #fff;
}
JSfiddle here