Why won't my browser properly center my CSS navigation menu?

After experimenting with different CSS properties like margin-right: auto and margin-left:auto, I found that using display: inline-block works well for centering actual links, but it causes issues with the menu when added as a parent element.

I suspect that there may be a conflict in my styling that is preventing the centering of the content within the browser viewport. I hope someone can provide suggestions to help resolve this issue...

Best Regards, Dale

Below is my simplified CSS code:

.navigation {
    width: 96%;
    margin: 1% auto;
    padding: 1%;
    border-top: 1px solid rgb(119,120,122);
    border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(119,120,122);
    background-color: transparent;
}

ul {
    overflow: hidden;
    margin: 0 auto;
}

ul li {
    display: inline;
}

ul li ul {
    display: none;
}

ul li:hover ul {
    width: 96%;
    display: block;
    position: absolute;
    margin: 0 auto;
}

ul li a {
    display: inline-block;
    cursor: pointer;
    position: relative;
    padding: 1.25% 1.4%;
    margin: 0.15% -0.2%;
}

ul li:hover ul a {
    margin: -0.2% 0;
}

P.S. I removed comments and unnecessary code for clarity, even though I prefer writing detailed CSS!

Answer №1

The reason why the content is not appearing centered is due to the fact that the containing element ul does not have a specified width, causing it to fill 100% of the available space; therefore, the left and right margins with auto setting are ineffective.

To resolve this issue, you can apply text-align: center to the ul element so that the inline li items will be properly centered within the container.

Answer №2

To easily center your menu, you can simply set a specific width for the main <ul> element like this:

ul {
    height: auto;
    overflow: hidden;
    margin-right: auto;
    margin-left: auto;
    width:70%;
    text-align:center;
}

Note: Apologies for the confusion earlier, I misunderstood the original query. I assumed you only needed to limit the width of the menu instead of centering its contents. Therefore, I have included the recommended solution by @Jacob with the addition of text-align:center;.

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