CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlcss
Ali Nouman
Ali Nouman

Reputation: 3414

Text-align does not apply to images

I just wrote the following code

<img src="http://www.lorempixel.com/100/100"><img src="http://www.lorempixel.com/100/150" id="test">

#test {
    text-align: center;
}

But the image is not centering. I also used text-align: right which did not work either. I can use float and margin-left but I'm curious why its not working with text-align.

Upvotes: 9

Views: 22219

Answers (9)

VifterGR
VifterGR

Reputation: 9

because it is "text"-align.

the property is designed to work a certain way and given a certain name.

Interestingly, if a the property is applied to a container that has image+text then the alignment works for text as well as image.

.one{
text-align: center}
<div class="one">
<p>hello pal</p>
<img src="https://cn.i.cdn.ti-platform.com/content/22/showpage/regular-show/za/regularshow-200x200.png">
</div>

Upvotes: 0

Salman Arshad
Salman Arshad

Reputation: 272166

Have a look at text-align css property as described on w3.org website. It says that this property applies to block containers.

Now, the <img> tag itself is not a container (it cannot contain any thing) hence the text-align property does not work as expected. To make an image center-align, there are various ways; the simplest of them is to specify text-align: center on its parent element.

Upvotes: 17

Services12Move
Services12Move

Reputation: 19

I try this and it works fine :

  • In the CSS:

    .centreimage {  
    text-align: center; 
}

  • In the HTML:

    <p class="centreimage">
   <img src="Images/blababla.png">
</p>

Upvotes: 1

Marvin
Marvin

Reputation: 953

Consider learning about the CSS display property, a very important CSS property in my opinion, at least when dealing with positioning and alignment. The property is set to different values on different elements by default. Assuming the position property is set to the static value, block and inline take up the entire parent element's width. block will be on its own line while inline shares the line with other elements. Elements like p tags and h1s are block level elements. Elements like span tags and ems are inline elements. Images however are neither!

Images have a default display value of inline-block. This means it has the characteristics of inline and block elements - You can set the width and height (like block level elements), it is on the same line as other elements (like inline level elements), and the container is the width and padding - nothing else.

The CSS rule text-align: center; centers the element in its container. This means for p elements it will be fine because the display is set to block. For images, however, you cannot center it (so nothing will happen) unless you put it in a div (parent element container) because, assuming the width is set to 100%, there is nothing to center it in, nothing to be aligned with. Consider the following example:

body * {
  border: 1px solid black;
  text-align: center;
}
<body>
  <p> This is a <span> !!Span element containing!! paragraph !!Span element containing!!</span>about lorem ipsum, the infamous place holder text. Lorem ipsum is supposedly Latin, but not really. That's all. </p>
  <img width = '200' src="https://i.sstatic.net/zZTPs.png">
  <p> The display of p is block, span inline, img inline-block. That's why the image's border doesn't stretch and the others do (you may not notice it but they do)</p>
</body>

A good workaround is setting the display to block. This will make ti stretch so there is something to center it in. As soon as there is something that acts as a parent container, ether it be changing the display (the border is what you are aligning it on) or enclosing it in a div (the div is what you are aligning it on) the aligning will then work.

Upvotes: 0

tscpp
tscpp

Reputation: 1576

img {
display: block;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
}

It should work! It worked for me :D

Upvotes: 4

Mark Amabile
Mark Amabile

Reputation: 152

Another way -- you can wrap it around a table. see below. We had to do it this way in a stylesheet.

<html>
<table border="0" width="530" >
<td align="center" valign="center">
<img src="http://www.lorempixel.com/100/150" id="test">
</img>
</td>
</table>
</html>

Upvotes: 0

waldyr.ar
waldyr.ar

Reputation: 15234

Not the best practice text-align to align images.

"The tricky thing about the text-align property is that you can only align text with it - you can't use it to move block-level elements like images. Some browsers will align images or tables with this property, but it's not reliable, as you've found." --Jennifer Kyrnin, About.com

  • You can use the deprecated img attribute align="center", Although you won't use. This way tags and style are mixed, and, to worsen, there are vertical and horizontal spaces around the full image.

    <img src="http://www.lorempixel.com/100/150" align="center"> <-- Wrong way

  • The best way to solve this is using CSS. Setting the image as div's background then the div's space will be your image's space and you can use margins to put it in place. You can try to use one of these others techniques

CSS background-image Technique:

background:url('path_to_img') center center no-repeat; /* div center */
background:url('path_to_img') center 0      no-repeat; /* div horizontal center */
background:url('path_to_img') 0      center no-repeat; /* div vertical center */

Upvotes: 1

Jonathan Henson
Jonathan Henson

Reputation: 8206

This property specifies how the inline content of a block is aligned, when the sum of the widths of the inline boxes is less than the width of the line box.

Try putting the img in a div with inline-block specified and the first image as the background image of the div.

something like:

<div style="display: block; text-align: center; background-image:url([your_first_image]);">
    <img src="[your_second_image]"/>
</div>

However, this probably will not work on an image, you need to use float, padding or something of that nature.

Upvotes: 5

icktoofay
icktoofay

Reputation: 129019

text-align is used for aligning the text within an element. An img element has no text inside of it to center, so it does nothing. float, which floats the element within its parent, is probably what you want here.

Upvotes: 2

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