CSS body element width not working

Question

HTML:

    
Some content

CSS:

body {
    margin: 0 auto;
    width: 470px;
    back         


        

Answer 1

The body actually is taking that width, and it is centering. It's just a CSS quirk that makes the background occupy the whole page rather than the space actually occupied by the body element.

A way to fix this is to include a background property on the html tag.

Here's an example.

However, as mentioned by others, this probably isn't something you want to do. It's better to add a div within the body and style that.