submit button not lining up no matter what with two input boxes in a table.

Question

Hello, This is ordinarily a simple task. I have a simple sign in form that has an email input,password input, and a submit button, all in a horizontal line. After hours and hours of taking styles off, and trying different structures, the button sits a little lower then the boxes. I am thinking it might be because I have absolutely positioned elements involved or that its' sitting in a div that has a background image.

Thanks in advance.

Here is the screen shot:

Here is the html structure:

<div id="new_home_join">
     <div id="sign_up_home">
      <div id="sign_in_table">
        <form name="sendEmail" action="Home.php" method="post">
        <table>
         <tr>
          <td class="sign_in_input">
           <input type="text" name="email" class="text" value="Email<?php if($formError == "true") { echo  stripslashes($_POST['name']); } ?>" onclick="clearify(this);" /> 

          </td>
          <td class="sign_in_input">
           <input type="password" name="password" class="text" value="Password<?php if($formError == "true") { echo stripslashes($_POST['']); } ?>" onfocus="clearify(this);" />
          </td>
          <td class="sign_submit">
           <input type="hidden" name="return" value="<?php echo $_GET['return']; ?>" />
           <input type="submit" name="subSignIn" value="Login" />

          </td>
         </tr>
        </table>
       </form>
        <div class="forget_pw">
         <a href="password_forget.php"> 
          Forgot Password?
         </a>
        </div>
       </div>

       <div id="not_member">
        <a href="http://www.cysticlife.org/signUp.php"&gt;
         <span style="color:#808080;font-size:18px;">Not a CysticLife member?</span><br /> Join our community today!
        </a>
       </div>
       <div id="browse">
        or just browse the
        <a href="http://www.cysticlife.org/Blogs_future.php"&gt;blogs&lt;/a&gt; and <a href="http://www.cysticlife.org/Questions_future.php"&gt;questions&lt;/a&gt;
       </div>
      </div>
      <div id="fuss">
       <a href="http://www.cysticlife.org/what-is-cysticlife.php"&gt;What is the CysticLife community?</a>
      </div>
     </div>

and here is the relevant css:

#new_home_join {background:url(images/join_today.png) no-repeat;width:333px; height:200px;margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;}

#sign_up_home {width:343px;}

#sign_in_table {width:338px;margin:0px auto 0px auto;position:relative;}

#sign_in_table {width:338px;margin:0px auto 0px auto;position:relative;}

#sign_in_table table tr td.sign_in_input {padding:40px 0px 5px 10px;}

#sign_in_table table tr td.sign_in_input input {width:105px; border:1px #999999 solid;padding:2px;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#666666;}

#sign_in_table table tr td.sign_submit input{width:72px; height:34px; background:url(images/search_button.png) no-repeat; font-style:Arial,Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#333333; font-size:11px;padding:5px 0px 10px 0px; border:0;}


.forget_pw {margin:5px 0px 0px 0px;position:absolute; top:62px; right:82px;}

.forget_pw a {padding:10px;font-family:Arial,Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:10px; color:#626262; text-decoration:none;}

.forget_pw a:hover {color:#F37336;}

#sign_in_table table tr td.sign_submit input{width:72px; height:34px; background:url(images/search_button.png) no-repeat; font-style:Arial,Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#333333; font-size:11px;padding:5px 0px 10px 0px; border:0;}

#join_us {margin:0px auto 40px 60px; font-family:Arial,Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#F37336; font-weight:bold; text-align:left;padding:0px 50px 80px 0px;float:right}

#join_us a {font-family:Arial,Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:14px; color:#999999;text-decoration:none;}

#join_us a:hover {color:#F37336;}

#fuss {margin:25px auto 0px auto; font-family:Arial,Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:center; color:#666666; font-size:12px;}

#fuss a {font-family:Arial,Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#666666; text-decoration:none;}

#fuss a:hover {color:#FF4701;}

Answer 1

Add vertical-align: bottom to td.sign_submit. It's currently set to baseline in global.css.

After that, you may need to add a few pixels of top padding to get the positioning exactly correct, though.

Edit:

Looks like you'll need a new rule for that:

#sign_in_table table tr td.sign_submit { vertical-align: bottom; }

Answer 2

A few things I noticed:

#sign_in_table table tr td.sign_in_input { ... }

#sign_in_table table tr td.sign_in_input input { ... }

#sign_in_table table tr td.sign_submit input{ ... }

1. You can simplify this. These selectors are overcomplicated and slow down both the rendering of the page and reading the code (see Writing Efficient CSS):

.sign_in_input  { ... }
.sign_in_input input { ... }
.sign_submit input { ... }

The above will do the same as your code. Moreover, it doesn't depend on the HTML structure.

2. When looking at the properties, I notice that all the table cells have a different padding:

.sign_in_input {padding:40px 0px 5px 10px;}

.sign_submit { /* No rules, just a default padding */ }

You should make sure the vertical padding is the same:

.sign_submit { padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; }

3. The submit button has a defined height but the inputs do not. If the height is higher than the height of the inputs, it is necessary to vertically align it to middle:

.sign_submit  { line-height: 34px;  /* = Height of the input */ vertical-align: middle; }
.sign_in_input input { height: 30px; /* Better specify the height of the input fields as well*/ /* ... */ }

4. Make sure that the submit button image does not have a white/transparent stripe on the top.

5. Make sure you set all vertical input margins to 0:

.sign_submit input { margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; }

6. Try to move the hidden input field after the submit button. Should not change anything but who knows :)

7. If none of the above helps, you might also use a negative margin hack (but it's not really a nice solution):

.sign_submit input { margin-top: -5px; }

8. You happen to have the rule for .sign_submit input duplicated. Remove one of them to avoid hard to track errors.

9. When looking at your PHP code, I notice you directly embed the $_GET contents to the page. This is considered dangerous and you should always sanitize this using htmlentities to avoid XSS.

EDIT:

After looking at the site, simply changing the vertical-align of .sign_submit to bottom fixes the problem in my Opera browser:

.sign_submit  { vertical-align: bottom; /* Instead of middle */ }