Question

I have a div with 2 floated divs.
On the left 3 buttons and on the right links in a paragraph, single line.
When the links on the right become to long (or I decide on more bottons) the paragraph goes multiline and I would like my buttons to center vertically.

In my example the bold name “Joe Smith” works fine, but if becomes “Joe Smith Brown Jones” I need my buttons to center. See an example here

CSS:

body { color: #CCCCCC; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 100%; }
a, a:link, a:visited, a:focus { color:#4188FB; }
a:active, a:hover { color:#FFCC00; }
.clearboth { clear:both; }

/* header */
.admin-header {
    width: 700px;
    padding: 15px 10px;
    background: #505050;
}
.admin-header-left {
    float: left;
}
.admin-header-right {
    margin-right: 0px;
}
.admin-header-right p {
    text-align: right;
    line-height: 150%;
}

/* buttons */
a.nav-btn, a.nav-btn:link, a.nav-btn:visited, a.nav-btn:focus { padding: 5px 15px; margin-right: 2px; text-decoration: none; color: white; background-color: #4188FB; }
a.nav-btn:active, a.nav-btn:hover { color: white; background-color: #FFCC00; }

.rounded-left { -moz-border-radius: 5px 0 0 5px; -webkit-border-radius: 5px 0 0 5px; -opera-border-radius: 5px 0 0 5px; -khtml-border-radius: 5px 0 0 5px; border-radius: 5px 0 0 5px; }
.rounded-right { -moz-border-radius: 0 5px 5px 0; -webkit-border-radius: 0 5px 5px 0; -opera-border-radius: 0 5px 5px 0; -khtml-border-radius: 0 5px 5px 0; border-radius: 0 5px 5px 0; }

HTML:

<div class="admin-header">
    <div class="admin-header-left">
        <a class="nav-btn rounded-left" href="#">New Order</a><a class="nav-btn" href="#">Invoices</a><a class="nav-btn rounded-right" href="#">Portfolio</a>
    </div>
    <div class="admin-header-right">
        <p>Hello <b>Joe Smith Brown Jones</b> | <a href='#'>account</a> | <a href='#'>settings</a> | <a href='#'>help</a> | <a href='#'>exit</a></p>
    </div>
    <div class='clearboth'></div>
</div>

Answer 1

You can try with:

display:table,table-row, table-cell

In this case you will be able to use vertical-align property:

You can check updated example here: http://jsfiddle.net/HPKTa/1/

Unfortunately this doesn’t work in IE6. In case of IE6, you can position buttons with javascript.