Twitter Bootstrap: Center Pills

My question is how you can center the pills?

I've tried to add center block around and also to change the float:left to float:center but nothing helps.

This has gotten much simpler! You just need to use the text-center class on the container, and apply display:inline-block to the ul. Just make sure you have a line break or paragraph tag separating the nav from any other elements within the container.

Done! 2 class additions, 1 line of CSS (don't modify the bootstrap css file!).

HTML:

<div class="col-md-12 text-center">
    <p>Copyright stuff</p>
    <ul class="nav nav-pills center-pills">
        <li><a href="#">Footer nav link</a></li>
        <li><a href="#">Footer nav link</a></li>
    </ul>
</div>

CSS:

.center-pills { display: inline-block; }

Edit 2015: As Artur Beljajev has brought up, Flexbox support is now common enough that you may want to use that instead:

.center-pills {
    display: flex;
    justify-content: center;
}

If you'd like variable width pills in a variable width container, I'd suggest using the inline-block display type and adding a class to the pill container.

Here is how I extended bootstrap for centering pills.

CSS:

.centered-pills { text-align:center; }
.centered-pills ul.nav-pills { display:inline-block; }
.centered-pills li { display:inline; }
.centered-pills a { float:left; }
* html .centered-pills ul.nav-pills { display:inline; } /* IE6 */
*+html .centered-pills ul.nav-pills { display:inline; } /* IE7 */

HTML:

<div class="row">
  <div class="span12 centered-pills">
    <ul class="nav nav-pills">
      <li><a href="#">derek</a></li>
      <li><a href="#">brooks</a></li>
      <li><a href="#">is</a></li>
      <li><a href="#">super</a></li>
      <li class="active"><a href="#">awesome</a></li>
    </ul>
  </div>
</div>