background image inline with text - html

Question

I have an image 200px x 100px which acts as a background image to a link.
On hovering, the bg image changes.
Fiddle here: http://jsfiddle.net/EnsFK/
As you can see from the image, the text is not aligned with the image and appears at the bottom. Is there a way to align the text so it is in the middle (Aligned with the small dot?) I've tried vertical-align and
line-height but to no avail.
.current-location {
line-height: 24px;
background-size: 48px 24px;
height: 24px;
width: 24px;
text-decoration: none;
position: relative;
line-height: 24px;
vertical-align: middle;
}
.current-location span {
background: url(images/mobile/current-location.gif) left top no-repeat;
display: inline-block;
background-position: 0px 0px;
background-size: 48px 24px;
height: 24px;
width: 24px;
margin-right: 10px;
}
.current-location:hover span {
display: inline-block;
background-position: -24px 0px;
background-size: 48px 24px;
height: 24px;
width: 24px;
}

Answer 1

Rather than using an empty span in your markup, you could use pseudo elements.
Something like this:
.current-location:before {
content: '';
/* image here */
margin-right: x px; /* however much you need */
vertical-align: middle;
}
FIDDLE
Markup:
Use this location
CSS
.current-location {
line-height: 24px;
background-size: 48px 24px;
height: 24px;
width: 24px;
text-decoration: none;
position: relative;
}
.current-location:before {
content: '';
background: url(http://i39.tinypic.com/2lk5lci.png) left top no-repeat;
display: inline-block;
background-position: 0px 0px;
background-size: 48px 24px;
height: 24px;
width: 24px;
margin-right: 10px;
vertical-align: middle;
}
.current-location:hover:before {
background-position: -24px 0px;
}

Answer 2

You can either change the line-height of the text to fit the image's location, or play with background-position property for the image's position to fit it to the text.
Working jsFiddle - also removed some of the unnecessary code.
.current-location {
line-height: 24px;
height: 24px;
text-decoration: none;
position: relative;
line-height: 26px;
display:inline-block;
}
.current-location span {
background: url(http://i39.tinypic.com/2lk5lci.png) left top no-repeat;
display: inline-block;
background-position: 0px 0px;
background-size: 48px 24px;
height: 24px;
width: 24px;
margin-right: 10px;
vertical-align:top;
}
.current-location:hover span {
background-position: -24px 0px;
}
Note: this is usually done without the <span> element using background on the anchor itself. However you method will work just as fine with the new CSS..

Answer 3

I like to use this css snippet for vertical centering
#text{
position:absolute;
top:50%;
height:240px;
margin-top:-120px; /* negative half of the height */
}
#container {
position: relative;
height: 400px;
}
<div id="container">
<div id="text"><span>Text.....</span></div>
</div>

Answer 4

Your link is aligned properly look at your image instead
background: url(images/mobile/current-location.gif) left top no-repeat;
If you want it to be center aligned you should consider doing...
background: url(images/mobile/current-location.gif) center center no-repeat;
Also give the true width and height of the image for this method to work.
display: inline-block;
has problems with ie6 you will need to use:
display:inline-block;
*zoom: 1;
*display: inline;
try and stay away from vertical alignment.

Answer 5

How about a version with no images and no extra markup? http://jsfiddle.net/6aaZX/
For this HTML:
Use this location
This CSS:
a {
display: inline-block;
color: #333;
text-decoration: none;
font-family: sans-serif;
padding-left: 4em;
line-height: 2;
}
a:before {
-webkit-border-radius: 50%;
-moz-border-radius: 50%;
border-radius: 50%;
background: #81B995;
content: '';
display: inline-block;
width: 0.7em;
height: 0.7em;
border: 0.4em solid #B7E2C8;
margin-right: 1em;
vertical-align: -0.3em;
}
It requires support for border-radius, but that's it - nothing fancy otherwise. If you did need to use an image, you could apply it to the :before pseudo element, as suggested by Danield