<li> Items in Horizontal Menu have a Gap Between Them

Question

For some reason the left and right borders of the li items do not touch there is about a 4-5 px gap between them.

#menucontainer {
  display: block;
  float: left;
  width: 100%;
}

ul#menu {
  display: block;
  padding: 5px 0px 5px 15px;
}

ul#menu li {
  display: inline;
  padding: 3px;
  border-right: 1px solid #D8D6FF;
  border-left: 1px solid #D8D6FF;
  margin: 0 !important;
}

ul#menu li a {
  padding: 3px;
  margin: 0;
}

<div id="menucontainer">
  <ul id="menu">
    <li>
      <a href="google.com"></a>
    </li>
    <li>
      <a href="google.com"></a>
    </li>
    <li>
      <a href="google.com"></a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</div>

I am using the 960 grid system CSS reset (which doesn't seem to change my issue w/ or w/o it). I need to get this working in IE 7+ and Firefox - Issue exists in IE8 and FF.

Komarek

Answer 1

You're using display: inline. That means that whitespace characters between each of those li elements are respected, and will be collapsed into a single space. If you need to, you can try using floats instead, or remove all whitespace between those elements.

 <ul id="menu">              
     <li><a href="http://example.com"></a>
     </li><li><a href="http://example.com"></a>
     </li><li><a href="http://example.com"></a></li>
 </ul>

would work, or if you're inclined to using floats,

#menu li {
    float: left;
}

instead of display: inline

Loats

Interesting...Whitespace. It fixed it. Thanks. I just deleted all the whitespace in the <ul> and then Ctrl+K+D (Visual Studio) so its formatted and works! – Komarek

Answer 2

To follow on from Yi Jiang's solution:

<div id="menucontainer">      
  <ul id="menu">              
       <li><a href="google.com"></a></li><!--
    --><li><a href="google.com"></a></li><!--
    --><li><a href="google.com"></a></li>
  </ul>
</div>

ensures that you really don't have any white space. Floating left can cause problems in menus that have a rollover a:hover.

Softfinned

Answer 3

You can use display:flex for the outer <ul>-element instead of using display:inline for the <li>-tags.

Markup

<ul id="menu">              
 <li><a href="http://example.com"></a></li>
 <li><a href="http://example.com"></a></li>
 <li><a href="http://example.com"></a></li>
</ul>

CSS

#menu {
    display:flex;
}

Fluff