Question

For my website that I am making, I have this code:

.menu{      
}

.menu a{
    text-shadow: 0 2px 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3);
    color: #d7d7d7;
    font: bold 16px Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif;
    text-decoration: none;
    border-radius: 10px;
    background-color: #444;
    padding: 5px 10px;
    text-align: center;
    -webkit-transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;
    -moz-transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;
    -o-transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;
    transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;
}

.menu a:hover{
    border: double 6px #00F;
    color: #00F;
    background-color: #FFF;
    font: bold 20px Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif;
    text-decoration: underline;
    text-align: center;
}

.sidebar{
    width:220px;
    margin-top:8px;
    margin-left:3px;
    background-color:#CCC;
    border-radius:10px;
    padding:10px;
    clear:left;
    -moz-box-shadow: inset 0 0 5px 5px #888;
    -webkit-box-shadow: inset 0 0 5px 5px #888;
    box-shadow: inset 0 0 5px 5px #888;
}

.sidebar p{
    text-align: center;
}

HTML code:

<div class="sidebar">
    <b style="color:#666;">Menu</b>
    <div class="menu">
        <p><a href="#">Profile</a></p>
        <p><a href="#">Friends</a></p>
        <p><a href="#">Community Service</a></p>
        <p><a href="#">Messages</a></p>
    </div>
</div>

For some reason the only way I can position the anchors on top of each other like this is by putting them in paragraph tags, but I don’t want that. Here is a picture of how all that code looks:

I want the menu to look like the Log In and Create an Account button, but there is no difference between the CSS, the only thing that could be differentiated between them is that the div containing them is positioned in a table. So I was wondering how I could achieve that same-width-and-height-as-the-ones-above-and-bellow-it kind of div. Also I tried putting it into a table and that only squashed it together and took out the round edges (CSS display: table in the .menu and display: table-cell in the anchor also does not work because it squashes it). Here is the rest of my code: http://pastebin.com/ZLS94ZvQ thanks for your help!

Answer 1

You should change your HTML in:

<div class="sidebar">
  <b style="color:#666;">Menu</b>
  <ul class="menu">
    <li><a href="#">Profile</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Friends</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Community Service</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Messages</a></li>
  </ul>
</div>

and your CSS in:

.menu{      
  list-style:none; /* remove style from <ul> but leave a 40px margin on the left */
  margin-left:-40px; /* this remove the 40px margin on the left */
}
.menu li{
  text-align: center;
  margin: 10px 0; /* this adds 10px top and bottom of each <LI> element */
}
.menu a{
    display: block;
    text-shadow: 0 2px 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3);
    color:  #d7d7d7; 
    font: bold 16px Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif;
    text-decoration: none;
    border-radius: 10px;
    background-color: #444;
    padding: 5px 10px;
    -webkit-transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;
    -moz-transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;
    -o-transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;
    transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;
}

.menu a:hover{
    border: double 6px #00F;
    color: #00F;
    background-color:  #FFF; 
    font: bold 20px Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif;
    text-decoration: underline;
    text-align: center;
}

.sidebar{
    width:220px;
    margin-top:8px;
    margin-left:3px;
    background-color:#CCC;
    border-radius:10px;
    padding:10px;
    clear:left;
    -moz-box-shadow: inset 0 0 5px 5px #888;
    -webkit-box-shadow: inset 0 0 5px 5px #888;
    box-shadow: inset 0 0 5px 5px #888;
}

Using <ul> is better and semantically correct. For search engines it should be even better to wrap the <ul> with <nav>