Tip #1 : Centering elements without flexbox and automatic margins

#showdev #css #webdev #beginners

This series is about all the neat little HTML/CSS/JS tricks I found and keep finding. Most of these are things that initially took me quite a long time to find or figure out and some are just useful tricks that I use in my day to day.

This neat little trick allows you to center elements anyway you want in almost any situation. I found this trick when I was trying to vertically center a relative element in its container. I found out that you can use this trick to also horizontally center elements. Useful when margin: 0 auto; or flexbox doesn't work. Anyway here's the code :

Note only use this method as a last resort, if you can use to automatic margins or flexbox, use those methods instead

I initially found this trick here

The code bit by bit :

Horizontal centering

.container {
  position: relative;
}

.center__horizontal {
  position: absolute;
  left: 50%;
  transform: translateX(-50%);
}

Vertical centering

.container {
  position: relative;
}

.center__vertical {
  position: absolute;
  top: 50%;
  transform: translateY(-50%);
}

Vertical & Horizontal centering

.container {
  position: relative;
}

.center__both {
  position: absolute;
  top: 50%;
  left: 50%;
  transform: translate(-50%, -50%);
}

Center a relative Element to its container

.container {
  width: 550px;
  height: 150px;
  background: #eaeaea;
}

.center__relative {
  position: relative;
  width: 50px;
  top: 50%;
  left: 50%;
  transform: translate(-50%, -50%);
}

Top comments (16)

David Koczka • May 7 '19 • Edited

I'd stick with flexbox, it's the best choice for now. Using absolute positioning can introduce more bad things, than good.

EDIT:
Here's a neat little game, which can teach you flexbox in no time.
flexboxfroggy.com

Gabriel Laroche • May 7 '19 • Edited

Yes I agree, but this is meant for situations where flexbox doesn't work, it's pretty rare but it happens. This method is more of a last resort than "use this intstead of flexbox and automatic margins". I'll add a little note to the post.

EDIT : It's particularly useful for centered absolute pseudo elements.

Martin Kolodziejczyk • Aug 28 '19

Thanks, it really helped me.

Gabriel Laroche • Aug 28 '19

I'm glad it could be helpful :)

Orlando Brown • May 8 '19

Other than the modal reason, why would margin 0 auto or flexbox not work?

If it is not working would that not hint to your markup and styling being over complicated to begin with?

Tricks/Hacks are fun and but it usually hides the problem within.

Gabriel Laroche • May 8 '19

I agree, if I can change the html to fit margin: 0 auto; or flexbox I will do it. However, I'm working on a beast of a website and a lot of content is generated via freemarker and changing the html in some of those files could create huge regressions throughout the website and as deadlines approach, you might not be able to check every knook and crany of the website. So, in my opinion, hacks are a necessary evil

Ben Palmer • May 7 '19

This is way back OG but before transform we had to use negative margins

Zoran Zlokapa • May 7 '19

This kind of centering is still useful when you need that element to be outside of the document flow, like overlay or modal. In any other case, use flex. Good tip anyway :)