Can I set margins on a centred div and still use max-width?

Suppose I have a div that contains the content of my page. I would like
to have this div centred in the browser, with a (say) 10px margin on
either side. So far, no problem... (WARNING - the HTML and CSS that
follow are bare minimum code, so don't flame me for not setting the
colour etc!!)...

HTML...
<div id="stuff">
stuff goes here
</div>

CSS...
body {
background: white;
}
#stuff {
margin: 0 10px;
background: pink;
}

So far so good. What if I now want to add a max-width to #stuff? If I
do, then when the client area in the browser window gets bigger than the
max width set, the #stuff div ends up on the left side of the window,
with a 10px left margin and a right margin of the client width, minus
the div width minus 10px.

If I change the margin setting for the #stuff div to look like this...

margin: 0 auto;

then when the window is large, the div is nicely centred, but when it is
small, I don't get any margins at all around the div.

So, can I centre the div when the window is big, and still have the 10px
margin when it is small? I can do either one, but I can't work out how
to do both. TIA

--
Alan Silver
(anything added below this line is nothing to do with me)

In article <op.s9q93ze4l8uz2z@zoete_b>, Barbara de Zoete
<trashbin (AT) pretletters (DOT) net> writes

Suppose I have a div that contains the content of my page. I would like
to have this div centred in the browser, with a (say) 10px margin on
either side.

What if I now want to add a max-width to #stuff?

You could do something like:
snip

Thanks for the suggestion. I actually found I could do it simply by
adding padding to the body. I never thought of that, but it basically
requires the content to keep a small distance from the edges of the
window, which was exactly what I wanted. I didn't need to muck about
with invisible borders, which was a good job as the real page as a
border set on that div already!!

Thanks again

--
Alan Silver
(anything added below this line is nothing to do with me)

In article <1147979910.123511.168620 (AT) j73g2000cwa (DOT) googlegroups.com>, VK
<schools_ring (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> writes

You don't actually need any divs at all for that. You already have two
containers to work with: html and body.
snip

That's completely brilliant!! Thanks a lot for that, I'll have a play
and see if I can simplify the code.

--
Alan Silver
(anything added below this line is nothing to do with me)