How to align input forms in HTML

Another example, this uses CSS, I simply put the form in a div with the container class. And specified that input elements contained within are to be 100% of the container width and not have any elements on either side.

.container {
  width: 500px;
  clear: both;
}

.container input {
  width: 100%;
  clear: both;
}
<html>

<head>
  <title>Example form</title>
</head>

<body>
  <div class="container">
    <form>
      <label>First Name</label>
      <input type="text" name="first"><br />
      <label>Last Name</label>
      <input type="text" name="last"><br />
      <label>Email</label>
      <input type="text" name="email"><br />
    </form>
  </div>
</body>

</html>

A simple solution for you if you're new to HTML, is just to use a table to line everything up.

<form>
  <table>
    <tr>
      <td align="right">First Name:</td>
      <td align="left"><input type="text" name="first" /></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td align="right">Last Name:</td>
      <td align="left"><input type="text" name="last" /></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td align="right">Email:</td>
      <td align="left"><input type="text" name="email" /></td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</form>

The accepted answer (setting an explicit width in pixels) makes it hard to make changes, and breaks when your users use a different font size. Using CSS tables, on the other hand, works great:

form  { display: table;      }
p     { display: table-row;  }
label { display: table-cell; }
input { display: table-cell; }
<form>
  <p>
    <label for="a">Short label:</label>
    <input id="a" type="text">
  </p>
  <p>
    <label for="b">Very very very long label:</label>
    <input id="b" type="text">
  </p>
</form>

Here's a JSFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/DaS39/1/

And if you need the labels right-aligned, just add text-align: right to the labels: http://jsfiddle.net/DaS39/

EDIT: One more quick note: CSS tables also let you play with columns: for example, if you want to make the input fields take as much space as possible, you can add the following in your form

<div style="display: table-column;"></div>
<div style="display: table-column; width:100%;"></div>

you may want to add white-space: nowrap to the labels in that case.


I find it far easier to change the display of the labels to inline-block and set a width

label {
    display: inline-block;
    width:100px;
    text-align: right;
}

Tags:

Html

Forms

Alignment

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