CSS text-align: center; is not centering things

Question

I have the following html:

<div id="footer">     <ul id="menu-utility-navigation" class="links clearfix">         <li class="menu-685 menu-site_map first">Site Map         </li>         <li class="menu-686 menu-privacy_policy">Privacy Policy         </li>         <li class="menu-687 menu-terms___conditions">Terms &amp; Conditions         </li>         <li class="menu-688 menu-contact_us last">Contact Us         </li>     </ul> </div> 

With the following CSS:

div#footer {     font-size: 10px;     margin: 0 auto;     text-align: center;     width: 700px; } 

I threw in the font-size bit just to see if the style was working (Firebug reports it is working but I wanted to see). It is working. But the text is not centered in the footer in Firefox or in Safari (have yet to check it in IE).

I tried with and without margin: 0 auto; and with and without text-align: center; no combo of those things worked.

Here is output from Firebug:

div#footer {     font-size: 10px;     margin: 0 auto;     text-align: center;     width: 700px; }  Inherited fromdiv#page #skip-to-nav, #page {     line-height: 1.5em; }  Inherited frombody.html body {     color: #666666;     font-family: verdana,arial,sans-serif; } 

Help?

Answer 1

I assume you want all the items next to each other, and the whole thing to be centered horizontally.

li elements are display: block by default, taking up all the horizontal space.

Add

div#footer ul li { display: inline } 

once you've done that, you probably want to get rid of the list's bullets:

div#footer ul { list-style-type: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px } 

Answer 2

To make a inline-block element align center horizontally in its parent, add text-align:center to its parent.