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HTML How to Make a Website CSS: Cascading Style Sheets Center the Wrapper

if you set a max width does it automatically tell the browser to let the width get smaller if the screen size is smaller

because i tried it just by putting width instead of max width and the div area did not adjust to the screen size when made smaller, does this mean max width automatically tells the browser to minimize the width along with the screen size?

2 Answers

Jacob Herrington
Jacob Herrington
15,835 Points

Max-width simply restricts the maximum width an element can have - it has nothing to do with resizing the window.

Here is a JSFiddle demonstrating what the Max-width CSS rule does.

hi then why when max width was set the #wrapper resized with the window

Hi Shakran,

In this project the wrapper div was set to a max-width of 940px.

What this means is that the wrapper could never be more than 940px wide but it could be less.

If the browser width was 1300px wide, then the wrapper div would be restricted to 940px.

If the browser width was 780px wide, then the wrapper div would shrink to 780px.

Below 940px it will take up as much width as it can.

I'm neglecting padding and margins here but this is the overall idea.