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HTML How to Make a Website CSS: Cascading Style Sheets Style the Basic Elements

Posted by Matt Ramsby
Matt Ramsby
5,932 Points

centering -- does it use the 'margin' property? I thought it was "text-align: center;".

Challenge Task 2 of 3

Select the ID wrapper, set it to a max width of 940 pixels, and then center it on the page using the margin property.

css/main.css 
#wrapper  {
  max-width: 940px;
  margin: 0 auto;
}
index.html 
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>Nick Pettit | Designer</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/normalize.css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/main.css">
  </head>
  <body>
    <header>
      <a href="index.html" id="logo">
        <h1>Nick Pettit</h1>
        <h2>Designer</h2>
      </a>
      <nav>
        <ul>
          <li><a href="index.html" class="selected">Portfolio</a></li>
          <li><a href="about.html">About</a></li>
          <li><a href="contact.html">Contact</a></li>
        </ul>
      </nav>
    </header>
    <div id="wrapper">
      <section>
        <ul>
          <li>
            <a href="img/numbers-01.jpg">
              <img src="img/numbers-01.jpg" alt="">
              <p>Experimentation with color and texture.</p>
            </a>
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="img/numbers-02.jpg">
              <img src="img/numbers-02.jpg" alt="">
              <p>Playing with blending modes in Photoshop.</p>
            </a>
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="img/numbers-06.jpg">
              <img src="img/numbers-06.jpg" alt="">
              <p>Trying to create an 80's style of glows.</p>
            </a>
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="img/numbers-09.jpg">
              <img src="img/numbers-09.jpg" alt="">
              <p>Drips created using Photoshop brushes.</p>
            </a>
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="img/numbers-12.jpg">
              <img src="img/numbers-12.jpg" alt="">
              <p>Creating shapes using repetition.</p>
            </a>
          </li>
        </ul>
      </section>
      <footer>
        <a href="http://twitter.com/nickrp"><img src="img/twitter-wrap.png" alt="Twitter Logo"></a>
        <a href="http://facebook.com/nickpettit"><img src="img/facebook-wrap.png" alt="Facebook Logo"></a>
        <p>&copy; 2014 Nick Pettit.</p>
      </footer>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>
Tamas Gonda
Tamas Gonda
7,332 Points

The margin: 0 auto aligns the whole div to the center of the parent element meanwhile text-align:center only centers the content itself. I made this quick example to show what do I mean. https://codepen.io/Gonduska/pen/WOJrdG

2 Answers

Matt Ramsby
Matt Ramsby
5,932 Points
Matt Ramsby
Matt Ramsby
5,932 Points

Ok - thanks. That's helpful. But I'm still not able to give the correct answer ... I wrote :

wrapper {

max-width: 940px; margin: 0 auto; } AND

wrapper {

max-width: 940px; text-align: center; } BUT neither one is correct ... so I'm at a loss.

Matt Ramsby
Matt Ramsby
5,932 Points

Actually I did have the hashtags before the wrapper in both attempts - it got cut off when I pasted it here.

Kyle Johnson
Kyle Johnson
33,528 Points
Kyle Johnson
Kyle Johnson
33,528 Points

Hi Matt,

I just put this in the challenge and it works but it looks like that is what you had to begin with.

a {
  text-decoration: none;
}
#wrapper {
  max-width: 940px;
  margin: 0 auto;
}

As for you confusion with centering.. check out this site: Centering in CSS: A Complete Guide. There are many ways to center an element based on the display type of the element. Sometimes you might even need to set the parent element to a certain display in order to get use from the text-align property.