Vertically centered elements in toolbars html/css - html

I have two button bars- each contains links, but one also contains a submit button of a certain height. The one with the submit button has all the elements vertically centered. I want the other button bar, without the submit button, to look the same, so I gave it an explicit height. However, the links within it align to the top instead of in the middle.
What's going on here, and how can I make link bars that are of a consistent height, with vertically centered elements?
HTML:
<div class="link-bar">
<input type="submit" value="Save"/>
link
link
</div>
<div class="link-bar">
link
link
</div>
CSS:
input[type='submit'] {
width:100px;
height:40px;
border:solid red 1px;
}
.link-bar {
height:40px;
background:#EEE;
border:blue 1px solid;
margin:10px;
vertical-align: middle;
}
See jsFiddle for example

Simply add line-height equal to the height. By default, any text on that line will be vertically centered. The exception occurs if you wrap the text to a new line.
http://www.w3.org/wiki/CSS/Properties/line-height
I also removed your vertical-align as it's superfluous to content in block level elements. It only applies to inline elements.
.link-bar {
height: 40px;
background: #EEE;
border:blue 1px solid;
margin: 10px;
}
.link-bar a {
line-height: 40px; /* equal to the height of the container */
}
DEMO:
http://jsfiddle.net/SLqbk/9/

Use the line-height property.
.link-bar a {
line-height: 40px;
}
http://jsfiddle.net/SLqbk/7/

Add this to your css
.link-bar a {line-height: 40px; }
http://jsfiddle.net/xYVRj/

I gave #Sparky672 the answer because he correctly addressed my specific question and led me on the right path, but I want to share what I ended up doing, which I think is more effective overall:
Instead of explicitly setting the line-height of .link-bar a to try to match up to the container and button heights, I just set ALL the elements in the toolbar to the same line-height, and make them display:inline-bock. While the normal caveats of using inline-block apply (See here and here), the end result is consistent sizing and vertical centering for all the elements you throw in your toolbar, with less css to manage:
.link-bar * {
line-height: 30px;
display:inline-block;
/* Keep top-bottom padding of elements zeroed for consistent heights: */
padding-top:0; padding-bottom:0;
}
See the updated fiddle.

Related

Avoid right-floated DIV wrapping without adding any height in container

I'm trying to have a toolbar always aligned to the right within a DIV without adding any height. The problem I'm finding is making this work both when the box has 100% width and when the width is determined by content. The HTML looks something similar to this:
<div class="box">
<div class="title">
float right
</div>
<div class="toolbar">
<button>1</button>
<button>2</button>
<button>3</button>
<button>4</button>
</div>
</div>
I managed to make it work in Firefox, but Chrome wraps the toolbar when there is not enough space for it instead of increasing the width of the container.
.box {
border: 1px solid #ccc;
display: inline-block;
margin: 5px 0 15px;
}
.title {
display: inline-block;
}
.toolbar {
background: #eee;
float: right;
margin-left: 25px;
}
I would like to find a single set of rules to achieve this regardless the width of the container, but I'm out of ideas unless I use some extra class to differentiate both cases. Also, I'm trying to avoid using overflow or clearfix because I don't want the toolbar to affect the height of the box.
In this fiddle I show all combinations I have tried: http://jsfiddle.net/omegak/c4y4t/2/
You can try this, This worked for me.
.title {
float:left;
}
See if this is the desired output
Updated the below css and added clearfix class to the parent div
.title {
float:left;
}
Add the following CSS and clear the floats on first Div.
.title {
float:left;
}
Here is the demo
I got it working in the end with a little hack.
I gave up on trying the title not to be float: left. Then, to prevent the box to have no height I added overflow: hidden to it. Finally, the hack consists on setting margin-bottom: -999px on the toolbar to prevent it from adding any extra height to the box.
Here is the solution: http://jsfiddle.net/c4y4t/8/

Display Inline CSS property behavior. Can somebody explain?

I have used three div's with css styling as display inline block with some specific width and height. The Div which as some text is pushing down. Can anybody tell me what could be the reason ? below is the code
Html:
<div></div>
<div>why this pushed down?</div>
<div></div>
Css :
div{
display:inline-block;
width:50px;
height:150px;
padding: 5px;
background: #f00;
}
http://jsfiddle.net/P5HGJ/
Each element behaves like a block element, but it remains inline.
You can change the vertical alignment with vertical-align: middle.
.show-inline{
display:inline-block;
width:50px;
height:150px;
padding: 5px;
background: #f00;
vertical-align: middle;
}
See http://jsfiddle.net/7y7Hd/1/
Read about vertical-align at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/vertical-align
This has to do with the baseline. Whenever you use an inline-block the baseline is calculated on the line-height of the font.
Because the outer <div>s don't have any font the baseline will not have the same calculation/position as the one with the font.
You can simply fix this by giving a global baseline on all the <divs>:
div{
display:inline-block;
width:50px;
height:150px;
padding: 5px;
background: #f00;
vertical-align: middle;
}
It doesn't really matter if you use top, middle, or bottom. As long as the baseline is on all the <div>s the same, it should be no problem
jsFiddle
inline-block makes the element generate a block box that’s laid out as
if it were an inline box.
inline block is placed inline (ie. on the same line as adjacent content),
but it behaves as a block.

CSS alternative to center

People frown upon the center tag, but for me it always works just the way I want it. Nevertheless, center is deprecated so I'll make an effort.
Now I see many people suggest the cryptic CSS margin: 0 auto; but I can't even get it to work (see fiddle here). Other people will go modify position or display, but that always breaks something else.
How can I center a span using css so that it behaves exactly like the center tag?
<div class="container">
<span class='btn btn-primary'>Click me!</span>
</div>
Span is an inline element, and the margin: 0 auto for centering only works on non-inline elements that have a width that is less than 100%.
One option is to set an alignment on the container, though this probably isn't what you want for this situation:
div.container { text-align: center }
http://jsfiddle.net/MgcDU/1270/
The other option is to change the display property of the span:
/* needs some extra specificity here to avoid the display being overwritten */
span.btn.btn-primary {
display: table;
margin: 0 auto;
}
Using display: table eliminates the need to hard code a specific width. It will shrink or grow as appropriate for its content.
http://jsfiddle.net/MgcDU/1271/
You can set .container { text-align:center; } so that everything inside div.container will be centered.
In general, there are two ways centering things.
To center inline elements (such as text, spans and images) inside their parents, set text-align: center; on the parent.
To center a block level element (such as header, div or paragraph), it must first have a specified width (width: 50%; for example). Then set the left and right margins to auto. Your example of margin: 0 auto; says that the top and bottom margin should be 0 (this doesn't matter for centering) ad that the left and right margins should be auto - they should be equal to each other.
The <center> element is really just a block-level element with text-align:center;. If you sent border: solid red 1px; on it, you can see that it's 100% wide, and that everything inside it is centered. If you change text-align to left, then its children are no longer centered. Example: http://jsfiddle.net/KatieK/MgcDU/1275/. Perhaps you should just consider your <div class="container"> with text-align:center; } to be equivalent to <center>.
You make the span block level, give it a width so margin:auto works
see this fiddle
.center {
display:block;
margin:auto auto;
width:150px; //all rules upto here are important the rest are styling
border:1px solid black;
padding:5px;
text-align:center;
}
UPDATE: In order to NOT specify a width and have natural width of element on the span you will have to use textalign on parent
see this fiddle
.container{text-align:center}
.center {
border:1px solid black;
padding:5px;
}
<span> is an inline element. <div> is a block element. That's why it is not centering.
<div class="container" style='float:left; width:100%; text-align:center;'>
<span class='btn btn-primary'>Click me!</span>
</div>
You can center the content of span only when you convert it into block, using 'inline-block' style.
Your parent element needs to have a larger width in order to let a child element be positioned within it. After that the trick with margin: 0 auto; is getting the parent and child container position and display values to be compatible with each other.
.container {
border: 2px dashed;
width: 100%;}
.btn {
display: block;
margin: 0 auto;
width: 25%;
}
http://jsfiddle.net/rgY4D/2/

Possible in css to display a background-image that clips to width of content?

I have two divs, inline. One displays a measurement, the other displays a unit value. The text in each is currently aligned correctly.
I would like to display a bar stretching across the top of the measurement value, but no further. Note: for various reasons, I can't use text-decoration: overline. Instead I am trying to display a background image behind the text, clipping to the width of the text (not the div).
I have tried using display:table; on the measurement div, and this works, but it has the affect of screwing up my div layout (the text is not aligned between the divs).
Here's some example html:
<div class="measurement">1234</div><div class="unit">mm</div>
Here's some example css:
.unit {
display:inline-block;
}
.measurement {
display:inline-block;
background-image:url(overline.png)
width:200px;
text-align: right;
}
Does anyone know of a way I can clip the background image to the width of the displayed text?
Just use a border instead of an image:
.measurement {
display:inline-block;
border-top:1px solid #000000
}
How about changing the divs to spans and wrapping the measurement span in a div to space it to the desired width?
HTML:
<div class="spacer"><span class="measurement">1234</span></div><span>mm</span>
CSS:
.spacer{
width:200px;
display: inline-block;
text-align: right;
}
.measurement {
background-image:url(overline.png);
}
See this jsFiddle for a working example.
(background-color should work the same as an image).

How to achieve table's centering capabilities without tables

For me, one of the most useful features of tables is that their width adjust to its content.
You can very easily do things like:
<table align=center style="border: 1px solid black">
<tr><td style="padding: 20px">
some text here
</table>
If the content of that box is wider, the box will be wider. Very intuitive and it works on ALL browsers, period.
You can achive something similar for normal block elements by using the float CSS property, i.e. their width adjust to its content. But the element will not be centered.
So, the question: How can you center a block element and make that element to adjust its width to its content in a cross-browser manner?
The modern way is to specify display:table and the workaround for IE is having a parent element and text-align:center on a inline/inline-block:
<div id="for-ie">
<div id="el">whatup son</div>
</div>
<style>
#el {
display:table;
margin:0 auto;
}
/* for IE, throw this in a CC */
#for-ie { text-align:center; }
#el {
zoom:1;
display:inline;
}
</style>
Demo
Here's a quick tutorial I wrote on this subject: http://work.arounds.org/centering-block-level-element-variable-width/
I'll lengthen it when I'm not sleepy.
Quoting CSS: The Definitive Guide by Eric Meyer
If both margins are set to auto, as shown in the code below, then they are set to equal lengths, thus centering the element within its parent:
p {width: 100px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
Setting both margins to equal lengths is the correct way to center elements, as opposed to using text-align. (text-align applies only to the inline content of a block-level element, so setting an element to have a text-align of center shouldn't center it.)
In practice, only browsers released after February 1999 correctly handle auto margin centering, and not all of them get it completely right. Those that do not handle auto margins correctly behave in inconsistent ways, but the safest bet is to assume that outdated browsers will reset both margins to zero.
However,
One of the more pernicious bugs in IE/Win up through IE6 is that it actually does treat text-align: center as if it were the element, and centers elements as well as text. This does not happen in standards mode in IE6 and later, but it persists in IE5.x and earlier.
If your intend is to display just some text at the middle of the page, you can use something like this:
<div style="text-align:center;">
<div style="background:red;display:inline;">
Hello World!
</div>
</div>
The first block will align contents to the middle. The second will fill the height equal to its contents, since display:inline will force the <div/> block to behavior like a <span/>, ie. adjust its width to content, and not to the remaining space.
Note this is limited to single line text only (like "some text here").
Use this CSS
#content {
position: absolute;
width: 150px;
margin-left: -75px;
left: 50%;
border: 1px solid #000;
text-align: center;
padding: 20px;
}
and this html
<div id="content">
some text here
</div>
Good golly, miss Molly! These answers are really overcomplicated.
CSS:
div.centered {
width:100%;
margin:0 auto;
text-align:center;
}
div.centered span {
padding:20px;
border:1px solid #000;
}
And then use this in your body:
<div class="centered"><span>Hello world!</span></div>