How does css margin work

You can set the margin property to auto to horizontally center the element within its container. The element will then take up the specified width, and the remaining space will be split equally between the left and right margins. We just launched W3Schools videos.

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Why HubSpot? Marketing Sales Service Website. Subscribe to Our Blog Stay up to date with the latest marketing, sales, and service tips and news. Thank You! You have been subscribed. Start free or get a demo. Website 6 min read. If we put multiple of these elements together, we see how margins create whitespace between them, giving them room to breathe: On the other hand, padding is located inside the border of an element.

Recommended Resource. Topics: CSS Animation. Don't forget to share this post! We'll look at some of the common problems that happen, as well as simple solutions to those issues. To go over all this, I'll be using examples from my Responsive Web Design Bootcamp over on Scrimba , which I pulled this simple layout from:.

Before we really jump into the deep-end here, I want to make sure we all know what margins actually are! I'm going to assume that we all know that margins are part of the box model, with margin being all the way on the outside, coming after the content itself, the padding and the border.

In other words, it's effectively empty space that we can use to create space between one box and another in our layout. Browsers come with a surprising amount of CSS by default, which we call user-agent stylesheets. These styles are important, but they also lead to one of the biggest issues that people run into with margins! Margins don't default to 0 on all of our elements, and this can cause all sorts of strange issues which we'll be exploring shortly.

Lists, blockquotes, paragraphs, and headings all have margin on them among other elements. While sometimes they're only a slight inconvenience, the default margin on paragraphs and headings seems to be the one which causes most issues out of the box.

By default, the left and right margins of a text element are set to 0 , but they all come with a margin-top and margin-bottom. This means that space exists between the elements on our page even if we have not explicitly set a margin. When two elements have vertical margins which touch each other, they effectively merge into one another. It's already a strange behavior, and then add it to the fact that it's only for vertical margins top and bottom , I get why people get confused and annoyed by them.

To help illustrate what's happening here, the. The two margins are touching each other, so they merge into one another. Again, the two margins don't add together, they collapse into one another, so the total space here is px. In cases like this, it's actually a good thing, though. If there are several elements with different margins, there is no need to add the margins together to see how large the gap between the elements is because we can rely on the fact that the larger margin always wins.

That said, one instance where margin collapse causes all sorts of confusion is when the first child within an element has a margin-top that merges with the parent's margin-top. There is a white space between the top of the viewport and the black box. That's not from the body it's much bigger than the 8px margin the body would have. Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. How does CSS margin work?

Ask Question. Asked 7 years, 11 months ago. Active 7 years, 11 months ago. Viewed 2k times. ComFreek Could be helpfull: w3. The margins collapse, see stackoverflow. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. No, the margin will only be 10px between the 2 boxes. You are saying the same thing twice , "that there must be a margin of 10px below box 1" and "that there must be a margin of 10px above box2" Think of it like this : There are 2 people, Harry and Sally.

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