Absolutely Centered Layout
This tutorial explains several techniques for centering content absolutely using (X)HTML. By “absolutely”, I am referring to an element (such as a <div>) that is centered on the page both horizontally and vertically. The techniques presented below explain how to center elements using CSS, frames, or tables.
Absolute Centering with CSS & (X)HTML
Designing an absolutely centered layout involves centering a division both horizontally and vertically. When this is done, the centered division (or other element) is centered according to the browser window. To accomplish this, use this (X)HTML:
<div id="wrapper">
<div id="center"></div>
</div>And employ this CSS (commented with explanations):
body {
background-color: #333; /* cosmetic */
margin: 0px; /* required */
}
div#wrapper {
background-color: red; /* cosmetic */
height: 0px; /* set to taste */
/* required */
position: absolute;
overflow: visible;
display: block;
width: 100%;
left: 0px;
top: 50%;
}
div#center {
background-color: #666; /* cosmetic */
border: 3px solid #FFF; /* cosmetic */
overflow: auto; /* set to taste */
position: absolute; /* required */
left: 50%; /* required */
margin-left: -200px; /* half of width */
width: 400px; /* width of div */
height: 300px; /* height of div */
top: -150px; /* half of height */
}Taken together and used properly, these two blocks of code will produce an (X)HTML layout with an absolute center that is centered both vertically and horizontally.
divs to solve the disappearing scrollbar issue.Absolute Centering with Frames
This method centers content via frames:
<frameset cols="*,777,*">
<frame src="http://example.tld/empty.html">
<frameset rows="*,333,*>
<frame src="http://example.tld/empty.html">
<frame src="http://example.tld/centered-content.html">
<frame src="http://example.tld/empty.html">
</frameset>
<frame src="http://example.tld/empty.html">
</frameset>Absolute Centering with Tables
To center content within any (X)HTML document, try this:
<table width="100%" height="100%" align="center" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0">
<tr>
<td align="center" valign="middle">
<!-- content goes here -->
</td>
</tr>
</table>New & Improved Absolute Centering with Tables
Absolute centering in Firefox and other standards-compliant browsers is not as difficult as it may seem. This next method is 100% valid (X)HTML/CSS and works with any !DOCTYPE (i.e., loose, transitional, or strict) on virtually any modern browser:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Absolutely Centered Table Layout</title>
<style type="text/css">
html, body {
height: 100%;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}
table {
text-align: center;
height: 100%;
width: 100%;
border: 0;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<table>
<tr>
<td><!-- [ content goes here ] --></td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>Absolutely Centered Page via Tables
This method may not appeal to the (X)HTML purist, but if you need a cross-browser method of centering an entire page, this code will most certainly do the trick. The idea here is to wrap the entire web document within an absolutely centered table. Thus, the first three lines must be placed before all page content, while the last three lines must be placed after all page content.
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" height="100%">
<tr>
<td align="center" valign="middle">
<!-- Place the entire web document here for absolute centering -->
</td>
</tr>
</table>
23 responses to “Absolutely Centered Layout”
Your solution “With Tables” worked perfectly well. Thank you so much for saving me hours of tiresome searching and endless trial and error.
Happy to help — I am glad it worked well for you!
The thing with tables will never work in Firefox if you have proper DOCTYPE set.
However, I what to do about it (check my website).
quake,
Thanks for the tip! I snooped around your site (including source code) for awhile and did not find anything concerning absolute centering via tables. So, we went ahead and provided our own solution. Please refer to the above article for a standards-compliant method of centering content absolutely via a table-based layout. Cheers.
thanks my friend,
you saved me with your centering with CSS
Glad to be of service!
solution there … :o)
http://d-graff.de/fricca/center.html
hi .. the div solution works well, only one problem maybe somebody can help:
if you make the browser window smaller then the div is -> the scrollbar doenst fit right und you cant scroll over the whole area …
example here:
http://www.berghindjoseph.com/testweb/home.htmlmaybe some body knows a solution for this?
thank you and greetings, max
Thank you for pointing this out, Max. I will look over the differences between the two solutions, post on the results, and possibly update this post as well. Also, I coded the
/testweb/link in your first comment because its target seems to have been removed. Let me know if this is not the case and I will restore the link. Otherwise, thanks for sharing your findings with us!sorry i’m in a hurry …
the link:
http://www.berghindjoseph.com/testweb/home3.html
cheerz, max *
No sweat — Thank you kindly!
Thank you ever so much for this solution!! It works like a charm for me, just what i needed!