Center aligning content with CSS and flex-box

Many a time I noticed that people find it very difficult to align content to the center either vertically or horizontally using CSS 😐. So I decided to write a few ways of aligning content to the center using CSS 😃.

Center aligning text in CSS.

So let's start with the easy one aligning text to the center of the screen. To do this just use the style text-align:center on the specific tag you want to align the text to the center.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>center align content</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1 style="text-align: center;">🍔 is center aligned</h1>
    <p>🍒 still in left</p>
  </body>
</html>

aligning content to the center

Now let's get into a little complicated stuff. Aligning a div or any content to the center. So the trick is using margin:auto and giving a specific width to the div. This will get the div aligned horizontally center to the parent element.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>center align content</title>
  </head>
  <style>
    body {
      margin: 0;
    }
    .box {
      height: 25rem;
      background-color: blueviolet;
      width: 25rem;
      margin: auto;
    }
  </style>
  <body>
    <div class="box"></div>
  </body>
</html>

To align an image to the center for an img tag you need to just add one more CSS property that is display:block.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>center align content</title>
  </head>
  <style>
    body {
      margin: 0;
    }
    .imgCenter {
      display: block;
      background-color: blueviolet;
      margin: auto;
    }
  </style>
  <body>
    <img
      class="imgCenter"
      src="https://i.chzbgr.com/full/7588073728/h78549C5D/not-sure-if-i-hate-css-or-i-hate-designers"
    />
  </body>
</html>

Suppose you want to align a div both vertically and horizontally to the center of the parent element then you can do that with the below code.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <style>
      .centerBox {
        margin: 0;
        position: absolute;
        background-color: blue;
        height: 15rem;
        width: 15rem;
        top: 50%;
        left: 50%;
        -ms-transform: translate(-50%, -50%);
        transform: translate(-50%, -50%);
      }
    </style>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div class="centerBox"></div>
  </body>
</html>

Using flex to align content to the center

A still better way of aligning content to the center is by using the flex properties.

Suppose you want to align a div horizontally to the center of the parent element. Then you need to apply the display: flex; align-items: center; justify-content: center; properties to the parent element.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>center align content</title>
  </head>
  <style>
    body {
      margin: 0;
    }
    .container {
      display: flex;
      align-items: center;
      justify-content: center;
    }

    .box {
      width: 100px;
      height: 100px;
      background-color: blueviolet;
    }
  </style>
  <body>
    <div class="container">
      <div class="box"></div>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

Suppose you want to vertically and horizontally align a div to the center of the parent element then you need to add the following style to html and body tag.

html, body { height: 100%; } and give some height to the parent element.

That's it your content should be vertically and horizontally aligned to the parent element. The below snippet shows how a div can be aligned to the center.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>center align content</title>
  </head>
  <style>
    html,
    body {
      height: 100%;
    }
    body {
      margin: 0;
    }
    .container {
      height: 100%;
      display: flex;
      align-items: center;
      justify-content: center;
    }

    .box {
      width: 100px;
      height: 100px;
      background-color: blueviolet;
    }
  </style>
  <body>
    <div class="container">
      <div class="box"></div>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

Congrats we are at the end of this post. I hope you enjoyed the topic.