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CSS - removing horizontal space in list menu using display: inline property

Asked 2011-01-17T17:49:27.307
11

I'm new to CSS and have a set target of learning & publishing my website in CSS by the end of the month.

My question:

I'm trying to build a CSS horizontal menu with hover drop downs, however, when I use the display: inline property with li (list) items, I get horizontal spaces between the li (list) items in the bar. How do I remove this space?

Here is the HTML:

<div id="tabas_menu">
    <ul>
        <li id="tabBut0" class="tabBut">Overview</li>
        <li id="tabBut1" class="tabBut">Collar</li>
        <li id="tabBut2" class="tabBut">Sleeves</li>
        <li id="tabBut3" class="tabBut">Body</li>
    </ul>
</div>

And here is the CSS:

#tabas_menu {
    position: absolute;
    background: rgb(123,345,567);
    top: 110px;
    left: 200px;
}

ul#tabas_menu {
    padding: 0;
    margin: 0;
}

.tabBut {
    display: inline;
    white-space: 
    list-style: none;
    background: -webkit-gradient(linear, 0% 0%, 0% 100%, from(rgba(255,142,190,1)),to(rgba(188,22,93,1)));
    background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, rgba(255,142,190,1), rgba(188,22,93,1));
    font-family: helvetica, calibri, sans-serif;
    font-size: 16px;
    font-weight: bold;
    line-height: 20px;
    text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px rgba(99,99,99,0.5);
    -moz-border-radius: 0.3em;
    -moz-box-shadow: 0px 0px 2px rgba(0,0,0,0.5);
    -webkit-border-radius: 0.3em;
    -webkit-box-shadow: 0px 0px 2px rgba(0,0,0,0.5);
    padding: 6px 18px;
    border: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,0.4);
    margin: 0;
}

I can get the space removed using the float: left/right property but it's bugging me as to why I cannot achieve the same effect by just using the display property.

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1 Answer

4

The problem is some browsers will render the white space between list items. For example:

<li>item 1</li>
<li>item 2</li>

There is a newline (and probably some tabs) after the </li> on the first line and before the <li> on the next line. Some web browsers will render this as a space. There are two workarounds.

One is to remove all these spaces, like so:

<ul>
    <li id="tabBut0" class="tabBut">Overview</li><li id="tabBut1" class="tabBut">Collar</li><li id="tabBut2" class="tabBut">Sleeves</li><li id="tabBut3" class="tabBut">Body</li>
</ul>

This is a kind of ugly solution, but it works.

The other possibility is what you mentioned yourself -- use float: left. Personally, I always go with the float solution.

answered 2011-01-17T17:57:50.957

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