I have two inline-block div
elements, that are the same, positioned next to eachother. However there seems to be a mysterious space of 4 pixels between the two divs despite the margin being set to 0. There are no parent divs effecting them - What is going on?
CSS
#container
{
display:inline-block;
position:relative;
background:rgb(255,100,0);
margin:0px;
width:40%;
height:100px;
}
This is what i want it to look like:
In this instance, your div
elements have been changed from block
level elements to inline
elements. A typical characteristic of inline
elements is that they respect the whitespace in the markup. This explains why a gap of space is generated between the elements. (example)
There are a few solutions that can be used to solve this.
Example 1 - Comment the whitespace out: (example)
<div>text</div><!--
--><div>text</div><!--
--><div>text</div><!--
--><div>text</div><!--
--><div>text</div>
Example 2 - Remove the line breaks: (example)
<div>text</div><div>text</div><div>text</div><div>text</div><div>text</div>
Example 3 - Close part of the tag on the next line (example)
<div>text</div
><div>text</div
><div>text</div
><div>text</div
><div>text</div>
Example 4 - Close the entire tag on the next line: (example)
<div>text
</div><div>text
</div><div>text
</div><div>text
</div><div>text
</div>
font-size
Since the whitespace between the inline
elements is determined by the font-size
, you could simply reset the font-size
to 0
, and thus remove the space between the elements.
Just set font-size: 0
on the parent elements, and then declare a new font-size
for the children elements. This works, as demonstrated here (example)
#parent {
font-size: 0;
}
#child {
font-size: 16px;
}
This method works pretty well, as it doesn't require a change in the markup; however, it doesn't work if the child element's font-size
is declared using em
units. I would therefore recommend removing the whitespace from the markup, or alternatively floating the elements and thus avoiding the space generated by inline
elements.
display: flex
In some cases, you can also set the display
of the parent element to flex
. (example)
This effectively removes the spaces between the elements in supported browsers. Don't forget to add appropriate vendor prefixes for additional support.
.parent {
display: flex;
}
.parent > div {
display: inline-block;
padding: 1em;
border: 2px solid #f00;
}
.parent {
display: flex;
}
.parent > div {
display: inline-block;
padding: 1em;
border: 2px solid #f00;
}
<div class="parent">
<div>text</div>
<div>text</div>
<div>text</div>
<div>text</div>
<div>text</div>
</div>
It is incredibly unreliable to use negative margins to remove the space between inline
elements. Please don't use negative margins if there are other, more optimal, solutions.