Call me stupid, but i’ve always been told that you can’t center the contents of an unordered list as used in the footer menu for many websites (maybe that goes to show that many people don’t know what they’re on about?) the solution just popped into my head – try it for your self!
styles:
#footer{text-align:center;list-style:none}
#footer li{display:inline}
HTML
<ul id=”footer”>
<li><a href=”1.asp”>Link 1</a></li>
<li><a href=”2n.asp”>Link 2</a></li>
<li><a href=”3.asp”>Link 3</a></li>
</ul>
Simple stuff indeed!
Thank you. I was just wondering the same thing and was looking for the solution.
how would you center the unordered list if the lis were set to display: block (in case i want to have backgrounds on them or set a height)?
Hi Mary, try display:inline-block where you can set the width and height (not in ie6 tho i think) or you could nest the li making the first li 100% wide.
I was looking so much for the solution… very simple and works perfect!
Congrats, thanx!
Hi Mark,
It worked like charm! :-)
Thanks for saving my day
-Rahul
Thanks, very helpful! I wasn’t sure it could be centered that easily, I’m glad I googled it before creating nested divs and other gnarly stuff like that :)
Hi Daniel, thanks i try to come up with elegant solutions that use minimal markup :)
I’m trying to do the opposite, I don’t want my list centered. I have it on my footer at http://anytimeteas.com
Here’s my css (warning, I don’t really know what I’m doing). I’d like the lists flush to the left and the headers to each column in the same location, preferably on the left side, directly above each list.
.footer-item {
float: left;
width: 33%;
padding-bottom: 10px;
}
.footer-item ul {
padding-left: 15px;
}
Hi Brian,
Nice article, it helped me out today :)
Try to add text-align: left to the footer-item class. it might look almost like you want.
thanks a lot =) simple solution for an annoying problem..
AWESOME!
Thank you so much!
I was trying differently and the solution was so simple.
simple though, but just what i needed! thanks!
@brian H
set your width to 100% and your button will be at the left hand side
Andy :D
You are a saint! Just saved my day :)
Thank You!
Superb, just what I was looking for. Nicely done!
Thanks, that works like a charm.
Thanks! I was messing with this for quite a long time on a few different projects. I don’t know why I never searched for a solution. great work.
Thanks.
This problem was too simple, so I was looking for an overly complex solution.
Man, I wish I had found this post earlier. Wasted close to an hour messing with margins. Thanks for posting the tip.
Thanks Mark. A simple solution and just what I needed.
Happy to oblige
I spent about 30 mins trying to figure this out with loads of unnecessary code before I decided to Google and found this. Thank you so much, so simple and so elegant.
But how about if it was a vertical list and I want to horizontally center each list item within the ul?
I tried {margin: 0 auto} but as was stated on CSS-tricks, that won’t work. And, I couldn’t really use his solution since he’s doing a horizontal list. Any advice? Thanks.
text-align:center in the li… simple
Hey. Thought to myself this must be way simpler than the current solution I have. Thanks.
You can do almost anything with CSS, including over-writing an element’s default styling properties. A worthwhile lesson though – a lot of people don’t know what they’re on about :P
and if you want the align the ul to the bottom of the surrounding div?
.myUL {
display:block;
text-align:center;
}
.myUL li {
display:inline-block;
}
Perfect! many thanks for all the info on the page. This code was my solution on my site. Love it.
Thanks alot,
before this i am using li{ float:right;} for foot menu, thanks for solution
Just what I needed. Thanks for posting!
thanks a lot
Thanks for the tip, I see this isn’t a new article, but is still serving the public. Cheers!