Why don't margin-top: auto and margin-bottom:auto work the same as their left and right counterparts?

If I set the CSS margin properties of a div like so:

div { margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; }

I get a div which is centered horizontally in the page, like so.

However, if I change the CSS to this:

div { margin-top: auto; margin-bottom: auto; }

my div is not vertically centered. I don't need to know a workaround (plenty of solutions are available) but I would like to know the reason for this behaviour. Why don't margin-top and margin-bottom work in the same way? What am I missing?

Solution 1:

The short answer is the spec says so.

10.6.2 Inline replaced elements, block-level replaced elements in normal flow, 'inline-block' replaced elements in normal flow and floating replaced elements

If 'margin-top', or 'margin-bottom' are 'auto', their used value is 0.

http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/visudet.html#Computing_heights_and_margins