I want a whole block to be centered in its parent, but I want the contents of the block to be left aligned.
Examples serve best
On this page :
http
<div>
<div style="text-align: left; width: 400px; border: 1px solid black; margin: 0 auto;">
<pre>
Hello
Testing
Beep
</pre>
</div>
</div>
Reposting the working answer from the other question: How to horizontally center a floating element of a variable width?
Assuming the element which is floated and will be centered is a div with an id="content" ...
<body>
<div id="wrap">
<div id="content">
This will be centered
</div>
</div>
</body>
And apply the following CSS
#wrap {
float: left;
position: relative;
left: 50%;
}
#content {
float: left;
position: relative;
left: -50%;
}
Here is a good reference regarding that http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/35-floats-and-clearing/#centeringfloats
Is this what you are looking for? Flexbox...
.container{
display: flex;
flex-flow: row wrap;
justify-content: center;
align-content: center;
align-items: center;
}
.inside{
height:100px;
width:100px;
background:gray;
border:1px solid;
}
<section class="container">
<section class="inside">
A
</section>
<section class="inside">
B
</section>
<section class="inside">
C
</section>
</section>
THIS works
<div style="display:inline-block;margin:10px auto;">
<ul style="list-style-type:none;">
<li style="text-align:left;"><span class="red">❶</span> YouTube AutoComplete Keyword Scraper software <em>root keyword text box</em>.</li>
<li style="text-align:left;"><span class="red">❷</span> YouTube.com website <em>video search text box</em>.</li>
<li style="text-align:left;"><span class="red">❸</span> YouTube AutoComplete Keyword Scraper software <em>scraped keywords listbox</em>.</li>
<li style="text-align:left;"><span class="red">❹</span> YouTube AutoComplete Keyword Scraper software <em>right click context menu</em>.</li>
</ul>
</div>
I've found the easiest way to centre and left-align text inside a container is the following:
HTML:
<div>
<p>Some interesting text.</p>
</div>
CSS:
P {
width: 50%; //or whatever looks best
margin: auto; //top and bottom margin can be added for aesthetic effect
}
Hope this is what you were looking for as it took me quite a bit of searching just to figure out this pretty basic solution.
Normally you should use margin: 0 auto on the div as mentioned in the other answers, but you'll have to specify a width for the div. If you don't want to specify a width you could either (this is depending on what you're trying to do) use margins, something like margin: 0 200px; , this should make your content seems as if it's centered, you could also see the answer of Leyu to my question