STYLE SHEETS

Using Auto Margins with Multiple Columns to Center DIVs with CSS

You may think that building centered web page layouts with CSS is an annoying experience, but guess what? This article series just might prove you wrong. It explains several CSS-based methods that you can use for constructing these kinds of designs very quickly, which should put a big smile in your face as soon as you start working with them. This article, the fifth one in the seven-part series, expands our use of the auto margin.

Author Info:

By: Alejandro Gervasio

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April 16, 2009

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

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</div>

<ul>

<li><a href="#" id="about">About Us</a></li>

<li><a href="#">Services</a></li>

<li><a href="#">Products</a></li>

<li><a href="#">Contact</a></li>

</ul>

</div>

<h2>This is the left column of the web page</h2>

</div>

<h2>This is main section of the web page</h2>

</div>

<h2>This is the right column of the web page</h2>

</div>

<h2>This is the footer section of the web page</h2>

</div>

</body>

</html>

Definitely, understanding how the above (X)HTML file works isn't rocket science, is it? Yet, despite its simple structure, it comes in useful for illustrating how CSS auto-margins can be used in conjunction with a multi-column web page to construct a centered layout.

In addition to listing the previous code sample, below I included an screen capture that shows how this web page design is displayed on the browser:

Now that you have at your disposal a functional example that demonstrates the actual functionality of CSS auto-margins, feel free to use it as a starting point for developing your own centered web document layouts. The experience will be fun, trust me!

Final thoughts

In this fifth part of the series, you hopefully learned how to make use of CSS auto-margins for building a centered, multi-column web page design. As you saw for yourself, this process is pretty straightforward and only requires a basic background in CSS and (X)HTML. That's all.

In the forthcoming article, I'll be introducing yet another simple CSS approach, called "evened margins," which can also be used for creating centered designs in a truly painless way.

Therefore, if you wish to learn how this technique will be utilized, don't miss the next part!

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