margin Attribute | margin Property

Gets or sets the width of the top, right, bottom, and left margins of the object.

Syntax

CSS	{ margin : sMargin }
Scripting	[ sMargin = ] object.style.margin

Possible Values

sMargin

String that specifies or receives up to four of the following space-delimited values: top Any of the range of margin width values available to the marginTop property. right Any of the range of margin width values available to the marginRight property. bottom Any of the range of margin width values available to the marginBottom property. left Any of the range of margin width values available to the marginLeft property.

The property is read/write for all objects except the following, for which it is read-only: currentStyle. The property has a default value of 0 0. The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) attribute is not inherited.

DHTML expressions can be used in place of the preceding value(s). As of Internet Explorer 8, expressions are supported in IE7 Standards mode and IE5 (Quirks) mode only. For more information, see About Dynamic Properties and Defining Document Compatibility.

Remarks

This is a composite property that specifies up to four width values, in the following order: top, right, bottom, left. If one width value is specified, it is used for all four sides. If two width values are specified, the first is used for the top and bottom borders, and the second is used for left and right borders. If three width values are specified, they are used for the top, right/left, and bottom borders, respectively. Negative margins are supported except for top and bottom margins on inline objects.

As of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0, you can specify length values relative to the height of the element's font ( em) or the height of the letter "x" ( ex).

In Internet Explorer 3.0, the specified margin value is added to the default value of the object. In Internet Explorer 4.0 or later, the margin value is absolute. The margin properties do not work with the td and tr objects in Internet Explorer 4.0, but they do work in Internet Explorer 3.0. To set margins in the cell for Internet Explorer 4.0 or later, apply the margin to an object, such as div or p, within the td.

As of Internet Explorer 5.5, this property applies to inline elements. With earlier versions of Windows Internet Explorer, inline elements must have an absolute  position or layout to use this property. Element layout is set by providing a value for the height property or the width property.

For inline elements, the top and bottom values are used to compute the border area of a surrounding inline element, if present. These values do not contribute to the height of a line.

Margins are always transparent.

Examples

The following examples use the margin attribute and the margin property to change the margin of the object.

This example uses the img object as a selector to set the margin of images to 1 centimeter.

Copy

<STYLE>
    IMG { margin:1cm }
</STYLE>

Code example: http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/samples/author/dhtml/refs/margin_h.htm

This example uses inline scripting to set the margin of the image to 5 millimeters when an onmouseover event occurs.

Copy

<IMG src="sphere.jpg" onmouseover="this.style.margin='5mm'">

Code example: http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/samples/author/dhtml/refs/margin_s.htm

Standards Information

This property is defined in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Level 1 (CSS1).

Applies To

A, ABBR, ACRONYM, B, BDO, BIG, BLOCKQUOTE, BODY, BUTTON, CAPTION, CENTER, CITE, CODE, CSSStyleDeclaration, currentStyle, CUSTOM, DD, defaults, DEL, DFN, DIR, DIV, DL, DT, EM, EMBED, FIELDSET, FONT, FORM, hn, HR, I, IFRAME, IMG, INPUT type=button, INPUT type=checkbox, INPUT type=file, INPUT type=image, INPUT type=password, INPUT type=radio, INPUT type=reset, INPUT type=submit, INPUT type=text, INS, ISINDEX, KBD, LABEL, LI, LISTING, MARQUEE, MENU, NOBR, OBJECT, OL, P, PLAINTEXT, PRE, Q, runtimeStyle, S, SAMP, SMALL, SPAN, STRIKE, STRONG, style, SUB, SUP, TABLE, TD, TEXTAREA, TH, TT, U, UL, VAR, XMP, CSSCurrentStyleDeclaration Constructor, CSSRuleStyleDeclaration Constructor, CSSStyleDeclaration Constructor

See Also

CSS Length Units Reference, CSS Enhancements in Internet Explorer 6