Centering - ie7 not obeying auto align

HTML & CSS
1

Even with something this basic, to center the page, IE 7 does not align left auto, firefox does.

#header {
background:#999999;
width:72%;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
}

Is this why most sites align everything to the left?

Also thinking about doing a min-width with this.

Should everything really be shoved over to the left to design with css/div tags?

2

That should work in IE7. Have you included a doctype?

Why not just write:

margin: 0 auto;
3 
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC
"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

And this is the problem. Since

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

makes it center

What would you suggest for a doctype?

Am till debating xhtml vs html, taking into account mobile users.

While am asking, would you use a container div or header/main/footer divs by themselves?

4

Transitionial doctypes are only meant for ten+ year old browsers. No new sites should be using a transitional doctype, so definitely go with strict.

Am till debating xhtml vs html, taking into account mobile users.

It doesn’t matter much, especially if you are serving the xhtml as html. HTML5 will pretty much kill this issue anyway, as far as I can see.

While am asking, would you use a container div or header/main/footer divs by themselves?

Are you asking about HTML5 elements? If so, I wouldn’t use them yet, as they only work with hacks at the moment—especially in older browsers like IE8 and below.

Otherwise, not sure what you are asking there.

EDIT: O, maybe I do see. Well, it depends on your layout. I would probably use those separate divs anyway, but if you want bands of color across the screen, then go with the separate option.