How can I make images fit into a 200 pixel square box using CSS?

Question

I have a bunch of images which all fit into a 400px × 400px box (that is, one of their dimensions is 400px and the other is smaller). I would like to be able to, using CSS, but jquery/javascript if necessary, fit that image to a 200px by 200px box, so that two edges of the image touch the box, and there is a gap between the other two edges of the box. Aspect ratio must be maintained.

My HTML is as follows:

<div class="small">
    <img src="/images/photos/View.jpg" alt="View" />
</div>

And my CSS is:

div.images div.small
{
    width:200px;
    height:200px;
    line-height:200px;
    text-align:center;
}
div.images div.small img
{
    vertical-align:middle;
    max-width:200px;
    max-height:200px;
}

You can see a sample here.

Unfortunately, my landscape images hug the top of the box, whereas I would like them to be centered. Also, I'm not sure of the wisenees of relying upon max-width/max-height.

How can I center my images within these boxes?

Answer 1

I set this up on my computer and it worked fine. After looking at your example page, the problem is because you've set the image to display:block. Either remove that rule from your general img rule (weird thing to set globally, anyway), or change the image rule you posted above to this:

div.images div.small img
{
    vertical-align: middle;
    max-width: 200px;
    max-height: 200px;
    display: -moz-inline-box; /* Firefox 2 */
    display: inline-block;
}

By default, the img element and other "replaced" elements (Flash, etc) are "inline-block" - this means they flow inline like text, but have a width and height.

Answer 2

I needed to do the same some time ago, and I found a good implementation in this link. "Center an image inside a div, vertical and horizontal, without knowing the image's size".

It works for me as intended.

Answer 3

I ran into this vertical centering problem once and to get it working correctly in all browsers, I resorted to javascript / jQuery:

$(document).ready(function() {
    $('img').each(function() {
        image_height = $(this).height();
        margin_top = (200 - image_height) / 2;
        $(this).css('margin-top', margin_top + 'px');
    });
});

Please note that you will need $(window).load instead of $(document).ready if the image dimensions are not given in the html.

Answer 4

have you tried using:

display:block;
margin-left:auto;
margin-right:auto;

that should center block level elements

Answer 5

Here is a solution that will work no matter what size you want. It will downscale but not upscale, center both vertically and horizontally, and only uses CSS. It took me a while to figure it out.

Put your <img> inside a <div>, then position the div as you want (i.e., give it the size you want, make sure to set the position attribute), then apply this:

.mydiv > .myimg {
    vertical-align: bottom;
    max-height:     100%;
    max-width:      100%;
    position:       absolute;
    margin:         auto;
    top:            0;
    right:          0;
    bottom:         0;
    left:           0;
}