How can I automatically center a container <div> in IE8?

[Samuel Hill]

I am working with IE8 in quirks mode...

I have styles cascading from my Firefox style-sheet which include:

#container {position:relative; width:1007px; margin-right:auto; margin-left:auto;}       
 
#textbin {width:720px; position:relative; margin-right:auto; margin-left:auto;}

Apparently I'm not doing something right, or auto-margining does not work in IE8.
Is this the case? If so, how can I get around this limitation?

[Samuel Hill]

For those of you who were wondering like I was, this is the reply I got on http://www.stackoverflow.com:

The old-school hack-y way to do it was to add text-align:center to the parent of the div you want to center. Of course you'll need to then specifically declare a text-align property for the child elements if you don't want them to be center aligned, as text-align is going to be inherited by child elements.

JMC Creative

[AutumnsDecay]

Using <center> tags didn't work?

[JKing]

<center> is a deprecated tag and I wouldn't recommend using it.

[Samuel Hill]

I've never heard of the <center> tag.

[AutumnsDecay]

It's still XHTML compliant though.

[JKing]

Yes, it will work but it is only supported by browsers for backwards compatibility. They are deprecated for a reason, because they are trying to phase them out.

I would personally rather do it right and avoid having a page that breaks and having to do the rework that will come when browsers stop supporting it.

[Samuel Hill]

good point...