Using Auto Margins with a Liquid Layout to Center DIVs with CSS
Often, when building a web site, web designers must construct centric layouts with CSS. While accomplishing this task requires only familiarity with the basics of style sheets and (X)HTML, building layouts like these can be challenging, particularly for beginners. So, if you’re interested in learning different CSS approaches that permit you to create fully-centered web page layouts without suffering premature hair loss, keep reading. This is the fourth part of a series of articles that shows you how to center DIVs with CSS.
Using Auto Margins with a Liquid Layout to Center DIVs with CSS - Getting started using auto-margins with a liquid design (Page 2 of 4 )
In order to demonstrate how CSS auto-margins can be used for building a fully-centered liquid web page layout, first I’m going to create a sample web document similar to the one shown in the previous article. In this case, it will provide the structural markup required for implementing this CSS alignment technique.
This sample web page looks like this:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Example on centering DIVS with a liquid layout (uses auto margins)</title>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas enim. Nulla facilisi. Vestibulum accumsan augue vulputate justo. Fusce faucibus. Sed blandit, neque sed lacinia nonummy, diam quam imperdiet justo, at dictum augue nunc a neque. Sed urna lacus, tincidunt at, aliquam id, fringilla id, felis. Vivamus feugiat molestie quam. Sed id dolor. Sed ac purus id sapien.</p>
</div>
<div id="navbar">
<ul>
<li><a href="#">Home</a></li>
<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>
<div id="maincol">
<h2>This is main section of the web page</h2>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas enim. Nulla facilisi. Vestibulum accumsan augue vulputate justo. Fusce faucibus. Sed blandit, neque sed lacinia nonummy, diam quam imperdiet justo, at dictum augue nunc a neque. Sed urna lacus, tincidunt at, aliquam id, fringilla id, felis. Vivamus feugiat molestie quam. Sed id dolor. Sed ac purus id sapien.</p>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas enim. Nulla facilisi. Vestibulum accumsan augue vulputate justo. Fusce faucibus. Sed blandit, neque sed lacinia nonummy, diam quam imperdiet justo, at dictum augue nunc a neque. Sed urna lacus, tincidunt at, aliquam id, fringilla id, felis. Vivamus feugiat molestie quam. Sed id dolor. Sed ac purus id sapien.</p>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas enim. Nulla facilisi. Vestibulum accumsan augue vulputate justo. Fusce faucibus. Sed blandit, neque sed lacinia nonummy, diam quam imperdiet justo, at dictum augue nunc a neque. Sed urna lacus, tincidunt at, aliquam id, fringilla id, felis. Vivamus feugiat molestie quam. Sed id dolor. Sed ac purus id sapien.</p>
</div>
<div id="footer">
<h2>This is the footer section of the web page</h2>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas enim. Nulla facilisi. Vestibulum accumsan augue vulputate justo. Fusce faucibus. Sed blandit, neque sed lacinia nonummy, diam quam imperdiet justo, at dictum augue nunc a neque. Sed urna lacus, tincidunt at, aliquam id, fringilla id, felis. Vivamus feugiat molestie quam. Sed id dolor. Sed ac purus id sapien.</p>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas enim. Nulla facilisi. Vestibulum accumsan augue vulputate justo. Fusce faucibus. Sed blandit, neque sed lacinia nonummy, diam quam imperdiet justo, at dictum augue nunc a neque. Sed urna lacus, tincidunt at, aliquam id, fringilla id, felis. Vivamus feugiat molestie quam. Sed id dolor. Sed ac purus id sapien.</p>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas enim. Nulla facilisi. Vestibulum accumsan augue vulputate justo. Fusce faucibus. Sed blandit, neque sed lacinia nonummy, diam quam imperdiet justo, at dictum augue nunc a neque. Sed urna lacus, tincidunt at, aliquam id, fringilla id, felis. Vivamus feugiat molestie quam. Sed id dolor. Sed ac purus id sapien.</p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Without a doubt, the structure of the above sample web page is pretty easy to follow. As you can see, it’s composed of the typical header and footer sections, and contains a basic navigation bar and the corresponding main area. So far, nothing unexpected, right?
Now that I've created a web document to work with, it’s time to see how it can be turned into a centered, liquid layout with CSS margins.
This topic will be covered in depth in the following segment. Thus, to learn more about it, please click on the link below and keep reading.
Style Sheets 
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Using Auto Margins to Center DIVs with CSS
