Vertical aligning an absolute positioned div inside a containing div - css

Question

I'm using the jQuery Cycle plugin to rotate images in a slideshow type fashion. That works fine. The problem I'm having is getting these images (of different sizes) to center in the containing div. The images are inside a slidshow div that has it's position set to absolute by the Cycle plugin.
I've tried setting line-height/vertical-align and whatnot but no dice. Here is the relevant HTML and CSS
HTML:
<div id="projects">
<div class="gallery">
<span class="span1">◄</span><span class="span2">►</span>
<div class="slideshow">
<img src="images/img1.png" />
<img src="images/img1.png" />
<img src="images/img1.png" />
</div>
</div>
</div>
CSS:
#main #home-column-2 #projects
{
width: 330px;
background: #fefff5;
height: 405px;
padding: 12px;
}
#main #home-column-2 #projects .gallery
{
width: 328px;
height: 363px;
position: relative;
background: url('images/bg-home-gallery.jpg');
}
#main #home-column-2 #projects .gallery img
{
position: relative;
z-index: 10;
}
And in case you want to see it, the jQuery:
$('#home-column-2 #projects .gallery .slideshow').cycle(
{
fx: 'scrollHorz',
timeout: 0,
next: "#home-column-2 #projects .gallery span.span2",
prev: "#home-column-2 #projects .gallery span.span1"
});
Any ideas on getting these images to center?

Answer 1

Try this:
http://www.brunildo.org/test/img_center.html
Vertical centering is a pain! Here's what the W3C page says about the vertical center:
CSS level 2 doesn't have a property
for centering things vertically. There
will probably be one in CSS level 3.
But even in CSS2 you can center blocks
vertically, by combining a few
properties. The trick is to specify
that the outer block is to be
formatted as a table cell, because the
contents of a table cell can be
centered vertically.

Answer 2

This method involves a little jquery, but works fantastic in most situations...
let me explain:
if all the images of the slideshow are contained within their own element div pos:absolute and those images are pos:relative, then on a $(window).load() you can run a .each() and find each img in the slideshow and adjust it's top positioning to be offset a certain number of pixels from the top..
jcycle automatically sets each parent div containing the image to pos:absolute on every onafter() so it's useless to apply this pos adjustment to them... instead target each img you have set to pos:relative...
Here is the example:
$(window).load(function() {
// move all slides to the middle of the slideshow stage
var slideshowHeight = 600; //this can dynamic or hard-coded
$('.slideImg').each(function(index) {
var thisHeight = $(this).innerHeight();
var vertAdj = ((slideshowHeight - thisHeight) / 2);
$(this).css('top', vertAdj);
});
});
and this is the html it's working on...
<div class="slideshow" style="position: relative; ">
<div style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; display: none; width: 1000px; height: 600px; " id="img0">
<img class="slideImg" src="/images/picture-1.jpg" style="top: 0px; "><!-- the style=top:0 is a result of the jquery -->
</div>
<div style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; display: none; width: 1000px; height: 600px; " id="img1">
<img class="slideImg" src="/images/picture-1.jpg" style="top: 89.5px; "><!-- the style=top:89.5px is a result of the jquery -->
</div>
<div style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; display: none; width: 1000px; height: 600px; " id="img2">
<img class="slideImg" src="/images/picture-1.jpg" style="top: 13px; "><!-- the style=top:13px is a result of the jquery -->
</div>
</div>
just make sure
.slideImg {
position:relative;
}
I think that's everything... I have an example, but it's on a dev site.. so this link might not last.. but you can take a look at it here:
http://beta.gluemgmt.com/portfolio/rae-scarton-editorial.html

Answer 3

The positions are relative according to the style sheet, so did you try setting them to display: block and margin-top: auto; margin-bottom: auto; ?
Another option is to align them manually in javascript based on the containing div's height.

Answer 4

You need to nest two divs inside each cycle item. The first must have the display: inline-table; and the second must have display: table-cell; both these divs have vertical-align: middle.
So the structure would look something like this:
<div class="slide-container">
<div class="slide">
<div class="outer-container">
<div class="inner-container">
Centered content
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="slide">
<div class="outer-container">
<div class="inner-container">
Centered content
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
With the following css:
.slide-container {
height: 300px;
}
.outer-container {
height: 300px;
display: inline-table;
vertical-align: middle;
}
.inner-container{
vertical-align: middle;
display: table-cell;
}
You can see it working here http://jsfiddle.net/alsweeet/H9ZSf/6/