CSS way to horizontally align table

html css alignment css-tables
Alexander Prokofyev picture Alexander Prokofyev · Nov 19, 2008 · Viewed 263.9k times · Source

I want to show a table of fixed width at the center of browser window. Now I use

<table width="200" align="center">

But Visual Studio 2008 gives warning on this line:

Attribute 'align' is considered outdated. A newer construct is recommended.

What CSS style should I apply to the table to obtain the same layout?

Answer

VonC picture VonC · Nov 19, 2008

Steven is right, in theory:

the “correct” way to center a table using CSS. Conforming browsers ought to center tables if the left and right margins are equal. The simplest way to accomplish this is to set the left and right margins to “auto.” Thus, one might write in a style sheet:

table
{ 
    margin-left: auto;
    margin-right: auto;
}

But the article mentioned in the beginning of this answer gives you all the other way to center a table.

An elegant css cross-browser solution: This works in both MSIE 6 (Quirks and Standards), Mozilla, Opera and even Netscape 4.x without setting any explicit widths:

div.centered 
{
    text-align: center;
}

div.centered table 
{
    margin: 0 auto; 
    text-align: left;
}


<div class="centered">
    <table>
    …
    </table>
</div>

Related questions

Is there a way to set the text alignment of entire column in a table?

Is there a simple way to set the text alignment of all cells in the second column to right? Or is the only way is to set the alignment for each cell in the column? (Unfortunately, the align attribute of …

Read More
How to horizontally center a <div>

How can I horizontally center a <div> within another <div> using CSS? <div id="outer"> <div id="inner">Foo foo</div> </div>

Read More
How to align a <div> to the middle (horizontally/width) of the page

I have a div tag with width set to 800 pixels. When the browser width is greater than 800 pixels, it shouldn't stretch the div, but it should bring it to the middle of the page.

Read More