Question

I have three HTML objects and want to arrange Previous button at the left side, Next button at right side and span in the middle inside a container div.

<PREVIOUS> |SPAN| <NEXT>

    #btnPrevious
    {
        float:left;
    }
    #spanStage
    {
        font-weight:bold;
        vertical-align:middle;    
    }
    #btnNext
    {
        float:right;
    }

    <div>
        <input type="button" value="Previous" id="btnPrevious"/>
        <span id="spanStage">Stage 5</span>
        <input type="button" value="Next" id="btnNext"/>
    </div>

Answer 1

Just add text-align: center to your wrapper to set the horizontal alignment of all non-floating/non-positioned children:

div{
    text-align:center;
}

<span> are inline elements by default. Thus you either have to use display:block on them and style them appropriately, or just tweak the parent style a little bit. Since there are no other children than the <span> and the <button>s your best of with this simple solution.

Note that text-align:<value> gets inherited from the parent, so if you want to include something else in your wrapper you should check whether text-align:center is okay for you. Otherwise use text-align:<value> in the specific element, where value is left, right, center or justify.

JSFiddle Demo