Thank You!
Katie

On that note… I'm having some trouble with a current CSS sheet, in that for some reason it just doesn't want to take (it's for my first attempt at skinning). I've had this problem before, and I'm really hoping it's got nothing to do with the default MT stylesheets as the last one did, as otherwise it means I'm going to have one big load of trouble skinning my site…

div {
margin: auto;
}

This'll only centre horizontally, however (and you'd probably have to define a width, too). Theoretically it should also work vertically, but, well, browsers suck.

And Lynda, all that maths in your post hurt my head.

You can't do it with absolute positioning as absolute will always want you to pinpoint WHERE it's placed, not just a round-about percentage.

You can do that in relative positioning though:

#centered {
margin-left : 30%;
margin-right : 30%;
border : 5px #000 solid;
padding : 15px;
}

Here is an example of a box centered 30% both on the left and right

Now, if you want to do something like that with three columns, this is what you'd need to do. Create three div tags (I put mine in ID tags, I'm not sure why) - one for each column. Then:

1.) Figure the width of the LEFT column PLUS the left margin.
2.) Figure the width of the RIGHT column PLUS the right margin.
3.) Absolutely position both the LEFT and RIGHT column inside their respective DIV tags.
4.) Relatively position (ie, don't assign a position) the middle column inside its DIV tag.

Here's where the math comes in. for the middle column's div tag, the margin-left should figure as the following:

total left margin of LEFT column
PLUS
total width of LEFT column
PLUS
total desired space between left column and center column

Do the same for the right margin.

Take a look at the code in THIS EXAMPLE for what I'm talking about.

One of the old blue or glish css tutorials actually has the same exact thing posted. I'll try to find it.

would absolute positioning the two side elements (with a % of the page from left an right) and leaving the middle element to do it's own thing work?

might go and have a play……..