Horizontally centering elements inside a div - html

Question

To make this easy, say you had a div that was 100px wide, and 3 divs inside of it each 20px wide. How can I align them to where they align to the center of the div leaving a 20px; gap on each side?

Answer 1

Center some HTML elements always depends of your project and integration dependencies...
You may be happy with these 2 solutions, display: inline-block; and float: left;
Both have pros & cons, hope that it can help you !
http://jsfiddle.net/HP2DS/1/
<!-- Inline-block -->
<div id='container'>
<div class='centered' id='content-left'></div><div class='centered' id='content-center'></div><div class='centered' id='content-right'></div>
</div>
#container {
width: 100px;
height: 80px;
text-align: center;
background: cyan;
}
#container .centered {
display: inline-block;
width: 20px;
height: 100%;
margin: auto;
background: magenta;
border: 1px solid black;
box-sizing: border-box;
}
<!-- Floating -->
<div id='container-2'>
<div class='centered' id='content-2-left'></div>
<div class='centered' id='content-2-center'></div>
<div class='centered' id='content-2-right'></div>
</div>
#container-2 {
width: 60px; /* 60px + 2*20px of padding... */
height: 80px;
padding: 0 20px;
text-align: center;
background: cyan;
}
#container-2 .centered {
float: left;
width: 20px;
height: 100%;
margin: auto;
background: magenta;
border: 1px solid black;
box-sizing: border-box;
}

Answer 2

Good day! Here is how I implemented it:
HTML
<div id="container">
<div class="child"></div>
<div class="child"></div>
<div class="child"></div>
</div>
CSS
#container {
width: 100px;
height: 100px;
border: 1px solid red; /** for viewing purposes **/
text-align: center; /** center the divs **/
font-size: 0; /** remove the unwanted space caused by display: inline-block in .child **/
}
#container .child {
display: inline-block; /** set the divs side-by-side **/
vertical-align: top;
width: 20px;
height: 100px;
font-size: 12px; /** override font-size: 0 of #container, so that text will be visible again **/
text-align: left; /** set text in the .child divs back to normal alignment **/
border: 1px solid blue; /** for viewing purposes **/
box-sizing: border-box;
}
I hope this helps. Cheers! :)