CSS horizontal centering of a fixed div?

left: 50%;
margin-left: -400px; /* Half of the width */

Edit September 2016: Although it's nice to still get an occasional up-vote for this, because the world has moved on, I'd now go with the answer that uses transform (and which has a ton of upvotes). I wouldn't do it this way any more.

Another way not to have to calculate a margin or need a sub-container:

#menu {
    position: fixed;   /* Take it out of the flow of the document */
    left: 0;           /* Left edge at left for now */
    right: 0;          /* Right edge at right for now, so full width */ 
    top: 30px;         /* Move it down from top of window */
    width: 500px;      /* Give it the desired width */ 
    margin: auto;      /* Center it */
    max-width: 100%;   /* Make it fit window if under 500px */ 
    z-index: 10000;    /* Whatever needed to force to front (1 might do) */
}

If using inline-blocks is an option I would recommend this approach:

.container { 
    /* fixed position a zero-height full width container */
    position: fixed;
    top: 0; /* or whatever position is desired */
    left: 0;
    right: 0;
    height: 0;
    /* center all inline content */
    text-align: center;
}

.container > div {
    /* make the block inline */
    display: inline-block;
    /* reset container's center alignment */
    text-align: left;
} 

I wrote a short post on this here: http://salomvary.github.com/position-fixed-horizontally-centered.html


The answers here are outdated. Now you can easily use a CSS3 transform without hardcoding a margin. This works on all elements, including elements with no width or dynamic width.

Horizontal center:

left: 50%;
transform: translateX(-50%);

Vertical center:

top: 50%;
transform: translateY(-50%);

Both horizontal and vertical:

left: 50%;
top: 50%;
transform: translate(-50%, -50%);

Compatibility is not an issue: http://caniuse.com/#feat=transforms2d