html - How to spread elements horizontally evenly?

Question

I have a div container on my web page with fixed width and it contains form elements for logging in. Below these elements there are a submit button, forgotten password link etc.

It happens the last line elements need fewer width than the box provides. How to spread them evenly? I don't want

• default

| A B C           |

• centering the line like

|      A B C      |

• nor table layout

|  A  |  B  |  C  |

Instead I am looking for some CSS way to achieve:

|  A    B    C  |

That is:

• put about equal space between all elements
• center the whole thing to avoid the first or last to the side

edit: This answer worked best. I created templates for 2 or 3 elements like this:

div.spread2evenly > div {
    display: inline-block;
    *display: inline; /* For IE7 */
    zoom: 1; /* Trigger hasLayout */
    width: 50%;
    text-align: center;
}

Answer 1

CSS3 flexboxes have better browser support now, although you may need to add additional vendor prefixes for more browser coverage.

Modern Approach:

Just change the display of the container element to flex and then utilize the justify-content property to specify how the browser should distribute the space around and between the flex items along the main axis.

In the example below, you will notice that justify-content: space-around or justify-content: space-between are used to space the elements out evenly.

.container {
  display: flex;
}
.container.space-around {
  justify-content: space-around;
}
.container.space-between {  
  justify-content: space-between;
}

<p>Using <code>justify-content: space-around</code>:</p>
<div class="container space-around">
  <div>A</div>
  <div>B</div>
  <div>C</div>
</div>

<hr />

<p>Using <code>justify-content: space-between</code>:</p>
<div class="container space-between">
  <div>A</div>
  <div>B</div>
  <div>C</div>
</div>