Centering a div in Skeleton

Question

For a project of mine, I'm using Skeleton Boilerplate for the first time. And I'm looking for the best practice of centring a div in Skeleton without bashing into the rules of Skeleton.

At the moment, I've the following structure for a login page.

HTML:

<div class="container">
<div class="sixteen columns vertical-offset-by-one">
<div id="loginBox">
<img src="images/yeditepeLogo.png" alt="Yeditepe Logo" class="yeditepeLogo" />
<form action="" id="loginForm">
<input type="text" name="username" required placeholder="username" class="loginTextField">
<input type="password" name="password" required placeholder="password" class="loginTextField">
<input type="submit" value="Log In" class="loginButton" />
</form>
</div><!-- loginBox -->

</div><!-- sixteen columns -->

<div class="sixteen columns">
<p align="center"><a href="registration.html" target="_blank">Click here to register</a></p>
</div>
</div><!-- container -->

CSS:

#loginBox, #registrationBox {
  width: 470px;
  height: 450px;
  background-color: white;
  left: 245px; */
  top: 20px; */
  position: relative; 
  margin: 0px auto;  }

#registrationBox {
  height: 500px; }

.yeditepeLogo {
  position: relative;
  left: 40px;
  top: 33px; }

#loginForm, #registrationForm {
  position: relative;
  top: 45px; }

.loginTextField, .registrationTextField {
  position: relative;
  height: 40px;
  width: 388px;
  left: 40px;
  border-color: #dedede;
  border-style: solid;
  border-width: 1px;
  margin-bottom: 10px;
  text-align: left;
  font-size: 18px;
  text-indent: 10px;
  -webkit-appearance: none; }

.loginTextField:focus, .registrationTextField:focus {
  outline-color: #ff9800;
  outline-style: solid;
  outline-width: 1px;
  border-color: white; }

.loginTextField:nth-child(2), .registrationTextField:nth-child(3) {
  margin-bottom: 40px; }

.loginButton, .registrationButton {
  background-color: #77a942;
  position: relative;
  border: none;
  width: 390px;
  height: 60px;
  left: 40px;
  color: white;
  font-size: 24px;
  text-align: center;
  opacity: 0.8; }
  .loginButton:hover, .registrationButton:hover {
    opacity: 1; }

As you can see, that #loginBox has a fixed width/height and it should always be on the centre of the page. margin: 0px auto code gives it the horizontal centring. But is it the best practice in Skeleton? Does Skeleton provide a better way?

Also how can I provide it's vertical centring?

Answer 1

There's actually a built in way of centering divs in Skeleton.

<div class="sixteen columns">
    <div class="four columns offset-by-six">
        <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.</p>
    </div>
</div>

The offset-by-six in this case can be altered from one to fifteen, and offsets the column at hand by as many columns as entered. As a neat feature, the offsetting is not affecting alignment when smaller screens are used.

To clarify: This doesn't center the actual content in the div, but centers the div itself.

Answer 2

I know it has been a while since this question was asked, but maybe somebody else can use the answer. I was able to accomplish centering with Skeleton by filling one-third column class with a space, then the next one-third column class with content, then another one-third column class with a space again.

<div class="one-third column">&nbsp;</div>
<div class="one-third column"><p>Center of the screen.</p></div>
<div class="one-third column">&nbsp;</div>