Margin Problems

[Shere Hicks McClamb]

I am having the hardest time making margin settings stick in Firefox.

I have used :
div#container {
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
width: XXpx;
}

and it just doesn't seem to work.

I have also tried setting my margins to zero. I have other isssues with CSS but this is the one that is bugging me the most right now. I have been forced to do some very ugly things to get my margins to act right.

Can anyone help?!?

[Christopher Bennell]

Are you trying to centre #container? Try making it's parent element's position either relative or absolute.

[Shere Hicks McClamb]

Yep, I will post the problem in the next couple of days so that we can look at it together. As you probably seen in the other reply I stuck it in a to show properly. I know - I know.

[nate]

can you share a link to the page? The problem is probably with the elements around it, more than the code you have. Firefox is usually pretty easy to work with, so it should be very simple to fix.

[Shere Hicks McClamb]

I have torn the page into pieces. I will try to recreate the problem in the next couple of days. I did something VERY ugly to get it ready to show... are you ready.... I stuck it in a
of a table. I will bring it out of the table and show you guys - thanks for all the help

[Kathy Nix]

My work around is having to put both for IE and Firefox. For Firefox I put "!important" after the px and before the ; I found this solution out on the web.

padding-top: 6px;
padding-top: 8px!important;

[Shere Hicks McClamb]

What does the !important tell the browser?

[Ryan]

it says hey do this nomartter what. Kathy's code cancels each other.

[Ryan]

Can you say more what you need to do? margin-left/right: auto; is used to center the element. However you need to define a width, unless you set the display to block. By default a div is width:100%. One thing to try is to remove the div from above. Sometimes the browser thinks this says container is a child. So it is looking for
<div>
<div id="container">
</div>
</div>

[Maria Carmen Tamma]

hi shere hicks...what aer you trying to fix? can you ftp your file so that we could you help you to re-align whatever problems do you have?

[Curtiss Grymala]

To aggregate some of the comments already made, and to add a little bit of information I've found to be helpful in my own use of "margin: auto", here are my thoughts:
1) The div#container has to be a block-level element. If any of your CSS anywhere switched your divs to inline, inline-block or whatever, you will need to explicitly redeclare the fact that div#container should be block
2) An automatic margin only works if you define a specific width for the div. I'm assuming you have done so, since your example has "XXpx" set as the width (I'm hoping you didn't actually use "XX" in your CSS declaration).
3) It is helpful to declare "text-align: center" for the parent node of div#container, then redeclare "text-align: left" for the div#container. That is the only way I've been able to get my container div centered consistently within IE (the auto margin worked just fine for Firefox, but never worked in IE).
4) Make sure you don't have any floats that might be pushing your container in any direction. Floats that are not cleared properly will mess up the margins of your div#container.
5) Just to clarify - you do want div#container to be centered on the page, not something found inside of div#container, right?

[Chad Hietala]

To center a div do this:

#container {margin: 0 auto; width:xx px;}

or

#container {margin-left: 0 auto; margin-right: 0 auto; width:xx px;}

[Stuart Elliot]

could you supply a link to the page? As others have stated it's not entirely clear what your issue is from the code you posted.

The code you have supplied will 100% give you a centered div in the browser window (again as others have said assuming you actually assigned values to xx in the width). Weirdly firefox is one of the browsers that absolutely shouldn't give you any problems on this front (unlike ie6 which benefits from the text-align 'hack' - I say hack but actually the code still validates).

Again as others have mentioned there might be some floating divs causing issues? Try adding clear:both; and see if that changes anything.