Radio/checkbox alignment in HTML/CSS

What is the cleanest way to align properly radio buttons / checkboxes with text? The only reliable solution which I have been using so far is table based:

<table>
<tr>
    <td><input type="radio" name="opt"></td>
    <td>Option 1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td><input type="radio" name="opt"></td>
    <td>Option 2</td>
</tr>
</table>

This may be frown upon by some. I’ve just spent some time (again) investigating a tableless solution but failed. I’ve tried various combinations of floats, absolute/relative positioning and similar approaches. Not only that they mostly relied silently on an estimated height of the radio buttons / checkboxes, but they also behaved differently in different browsers. Ideally, I would like to find a solution which does not assume anything about sizes or special browser quirks. I’m fine with using tables, but I wonder where there is another solution.

I think I have finally solved the problem. One commonly recommended solution is to use vertical-align: middle:

<input type="radio" style="vertical-align: middle"> Label

The problem, however, is that this still produces visible misalignments even though it should theoretically work. The CSS2 specification says that:

> vertical-align: middle: Align the vertical midpoint of the box with the baseline of the parent box plus half the x-height of the parent.

So it should be in the perfect centre (the x-height is the height of the character x). However, the problem seems to be caused by the fact browsers commonly add some random uneven margins to radio buttons and checkboxes. One can check, for instance in Firefox using Firebug, that the default checkbox margin in Firefox is 3px 3px 0px 5px. I'm not sure where it comes from, but the other browsers seem to have similar margins as well. So to get a perfect alignment, one needs to get rid of these margins:

<input type="radio" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px;"> Label

It is still interesting to note that in the table based solution the margins are somehow eaten and everything aligns nicely.

The following works in Firefox and Opera (sorry, I do not have access to other browsers at the moment):

<div class="form-field">
    <input id="option1" type="radio" name="opt"/>
    <label for="option1">Option 1</label>
</div>

The CSS:

.form-field * {
    vertical-align: middle;
}

I found the best and easiest way to do it is this one because you don't need to add labels, divs or whatsoever.

input { vertical-align: middle; margin-top: -1px;}

I wouldn't use tables for this at all. CSS can easily do this.

I would do something like this:

   <p class="clearfix">
      <input id="option1" type="radio" name="opt" />
      <label for="option1">Option 1</label>
   </p>

p { margin: 0px 0px 10px 0px; }
input { float: left; width: 50px; }
label { margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px; float: left; }

Note: I have used the clearfix class from : http://www.positioniseverything.net/easyclearing.html

.clearfix:after {
    content: ".";
    display: block;
    height: 0;
    clear: both;
    visibility: hidden;
}

.clearfix {display: inline-block;}

/* Hides from IE-mac \*/
* html .clearfix {height: 1%;}
.clearfix {display: block;}
/* End hide from IE-mac */

This is a bit of a hack but this CSS seems to get it working very nicely in all browsers the same as using tables (apart from chrome)

input[type=radio] { vertical-align: middle; margin: 0; *margin-top: -2px; }
label { vertical-align: middle; }
@media screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio:0) {
 input[type=radio] { margin-top: -2px; }
}

Make sure you use labels with your radios for it to work. i.e.

<option> <label>My Radio</label>

If your label is long and goes on multiple rows setting the width and display:inline-block will help.

.form-field * {
  vertical-align: middle;
}
.form-field input {
  clear:left;
}
.form-field label { 
  width:200px;
  display:inline-block;
}

<div class="form-field">
    <input id="option1" type="radio" name="opt" value="1"/>
    <label for="option1">Option 1 is very long and is likely to go on two lines.</label>
    <input id="option2" type="radio" name="opt" value="2"/>
    <label for="option2">Option 2 might fit into one line.</label>
</div>

I found the best fix for this was to give the input a height that matches the label. At least this fixed my problem with inconsistencies in Firefox and IE.

input { height: 18px; margin: 0; float: left; }
label { height: 18px; float: left; }

<li>
  <input id="option1" type="radio" name="opt" />
  <label for="option1">Option 1</label>
</li>

The following code should work :)

Regards,

---

<style type="text/css">
input[type=checkbox] {
margin-bottom: 4px;
vertical-align: middle;
}
label {
vertical-align: middle;
}
</style>
<input id="checkBox1" type="checkbox" /><label for="checkBox1">Show assets</label><br />
<input id="checkBox2" type="checkbox" /><label for="checkBox2">Show detectors</label><br />

This is a simple solution which solved the problem for me:

label 
{

/* for firefox */
vertical-align:middle; 

/*for internet explorer */
*bottom:3px;
*position:relative; 

padding-bottom:7px; 

}

There are several ways to implement it:

1. For ASP.NET Standard CheckBox:

   .tdInputCheckBox
   { 
   position:relative;
   top:-2px;
   }
   <table>
           <tr>
               <td class="tdInputCheckBox">                  
                   <asp:CheckBox ID="chkMale" runat="server" Text="Male" />
                   <asp:CheckBox ID="chkFemale" runat="server" Text="Female" />
               </td>
           </tr>
   </table>
   

2. For DevExpress CheckBox:

   <dx:ASPxCheckBox ID="chkAccept" runat="server" Text="Yes" Layout="Flow"/>
   <dx:ASPxCheckBox ID="chkAccept" runat="server" Text="No" Layout="Flow"/>
   

3. For RadioButtonList:

   <asp:RadioButtonList ID="rdoAccept" runat="server" RepeatDirection="Horizontal">
      <asp:ListItem>Yes</asp:ListItem>
      <asp:ListItem>No</asp:ListItem>
   </asp:RadioButtonList>
   

4. For Required Field Validators:

   <asp:TextBox ID="txtEmailId" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>
   <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="reqEmailId" runat="server" ErrorMessage="Email id is required." Display="Dynamic" ControlToValidate="txtEmailId"></asp:RequiredFieldValidator>
   <asp:RegularExpressionValidator ID="regexEmailId" runat="server" ErrorMessage="Invalid Email Id." ControlToValidate="txtEmailId" Text="*"></asp:RegularExpressionValidator>`
   

Below I will insert a checkbox dynamically. Style is included to align the checkbox and most important to make sure word wrap is straight. the most important thing here is display: table-cell; for the alignment

The visual basic code.

'the code to dynamically insert a checkbox

Dim tbl As Table = New Table()
Dim tc1 As TableCell = New TableCell()
tc1.CssClass = "tdCheckTablecell"

'get the data for this checkbox
Dim ds As DataSet
Dim Company As ina.VullenCheckbox
Company = New ina.VullenCheckbox
Company.IDVeldenperScherm = HETid
Company.IDLoginBedrijf = HttpContext.Current.Session("welkbedrijf")
ds = Company.GetsDataVullenCheckbox("K_GetS_VullenCheckboxMasterDDLOmschrijvingVC") 'ds6

'create the checkbox

Dim radio As CheckBoxList = New CheckBoxList
radio.DataSource = ds
radio.ID = HETid
radio.CssClass = "tdCheck"
radio.DataTextField = "OmschrijvingVC"
radio.DataValueField = "IDVullenCheckbox"
radio.Attributes.Add("onclick", "documentChanged();")
radio.DataBind()

'connect the checkbox

tc1.Controls.Add(radio)
tr.Cells.Add(tc1)
tbl.Rows.Add(tr)

'the style for the checkbox

input[type="checkbox"] {float: left;   width: 5%; height:20px; border: 1px solid black; }

.tdCheck label {	 width: 90%;display: table-cell;	align:right;}

.tdCheck {width:100%;}

and the HTML output

http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head id="HEAD1">
	<title>
		name
	</title>
	<meta content="Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 7.1" name="GENERATOR" /><meta content="Visual Basic .NET 7.1" name="CODE_LANGUAGE" />
</head>
<style type='text/css'>
input[type="checkbox"] {float: left;   width: 20px; height:20px;  }
.tdCheck label {	 width: 90%;display: table-cell;	align:right;}
.tdCheck {width:100%;}
.tdLabel {width:100px;}
.tdCheckTableCell {width:400px;}
TABLE
{

vertical-align:top;
border:1;border-style:solid;margin:0;padding:0;border-spacing:0;
border-color:red;
}
TD
{
vertical-align:top;	/*labels ed en de items in het datagrid*/
border: 1;	border-style:solid;
border-color:green;
	font-size:30px	}
</style>
<body id="bodyInternet"  > 
	<form name="Form2" method="post" action="main.aspx?B" id="Form2">
		<table border="0">
			<tr>
				<td class="tdLabel">
					<span id="ctl16_ID{A}" class="DynamicLabel">
						TITLE
					</span>
				</td>
				<td class="tdCheckTablecell">
					<table id="ctl16_{A}" class="tdCheck" onclick="documentChanged();" border="0">
						<tr>
							<td>
								<input id="ctl16_{A}_0" type="checkbox" name="ctl16${A}$0" />
								<label for="ctl16_{A}_0">
									this is just dummy text to show the text will warp this is just dummy text to show the text will warp this is just dummy text to show the text will warp this is just dummy text to show the text will warp this is just dummy text to show the text will warp this is just dummy text to show the text will warp  
								</label>
							</td>
						</tr>
						<tr>
							<td>
								<input id="ctl16_{A}_1" type="checkbox" name="ctl16${A}$1" />
								<label for="ctl16_{A}_1">
									ITEM2
								</label>
							</td>
						</tr>
						<tr>
							<td>
								<input id="ctl16_{A}_2" type="checkbox" name="ctl16${A}$2" />
								<label for="ctl16_{A}_2">
									ITEM3
								</label>
							</td>
						</tr>
					</table>
				</td>
			</tr>
		</table>
</form>
</body>

@sfjedi

I've created a class and assigned the css values to it.

.radioA{
   vertical-align: middle;
}

It is working and you can check it in the below link. http://jsfiddle.net/gNVsC/ Hope it was useful.

input[type="radio"], input[type="checkbox"] {
    vertical-align: middle;
    margin-top: -1;
}