Vertically Align Text Block in Responsive Square

Question

I wondered if someone could help me with this. Basically, I'm trying to center a text block vertically that sits within a square. The square is reponsive and therefore doesn't have a fixed width and height.

My HTML looks like this:

<div class="related-products">
<div class="row">
    <div class="large-15 medium-15 columns">

        <h5>Related Products</h5>
        <div class="row">

            <div class="small-15 medium-4 large-4 columns">
                <div class="product">
                    <a href="/"><img src="http://store.kitchenscookshop.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/500x500/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/t/3/t317_mug_red_1pt.jpg"></a>
                    <dl>
                        <dt><a href="/">Product Name is Product Name</a></dt>
                        <dd><del>&pound;29</del> &pound;24</dd>
                    </dl>
                </div>
            </div>

        </div>
    </div>
</div>

And my CSS like this:

.product {
    position: relative;
    text-align: center;
    display: block;
}

.product dl {
    background-color: rgba(161,161,161,0.6);
    width: 100%;
    height: 100%;
    padding: 0 20%;
    overflow: auto;
    margin: auto;
    position: absolute;
    top: 0; left: 0; bottom: 0; right: 0;
}

I've also set up a demo over here.

Any help with pointing me in the right direction is appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I added "display: table" to your ".product dl" and it seemed to work fine. Also, I think your "vertical-align: center" is meant to be "vertical-align: middle". Let me know how you did.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, vertical-align only works on inline elements. It's confused many a web developer, because it seems like something that should be easy to do.

I'm basically using this solution: http://zerosixthree.se/vertical-align-anything-with-just-3-lines-of-css/

Change .product dl's CSS to:

.product dl {
  background-color: rgba(161,161,161,0.6);
  width: 100%;
  height: auto; /* Won't work without this */
  padding: 0 20%;
  overflow: auto;
  margin: auto;
  position: absolute;
  top: 50%; 
  -webkit-transform:translateY(-50%); 
  /* You may need to add more vendor prefixes; you can use http://prefixmycss.com */
  transform:translateY(-50%);
  z-index:2;
}

To fix the grey color overlay, we can remove the background color from .product dl and add this code:

.product:after {
  position:absolute;
  display:block;
  content:'';
  background-color: rgba(161,161,161,0.6);
  top:0;
  left:0;
  right:0;
  bottom:0;
  z-index:1;
}

Answer 3

I re-worked it out a little. I saw you are using tables, not what I'd do, but its fine I guess. The principal is still the same. However, if you are pulling images from a database and you can't use my method, again, the css fundamentals I used can still be used by simply taking the img out of the background and fix it to the div

.product {
    background: rgba(161, 161, 161, 0.6) url("http://store.kitchenscookshop.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/500x500/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/t/3/t317_mug_red_1pt.jpg") center center no-repeat;
    height:400px;
    padding: 0 20%;
    overflow: auto;
    margin: auto;
 }

FIDDLE