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Asked: 2026-05-23T02:00:36+00:00

I’m trying to show a simple tab-menu on a web page. I’m using a

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I’m trying to show a simple tab-menu on a web page. I’m using a pretty basic and well-used pattern, which is working fine except that when I test the page in Chrome (well, Chromium but afaik it’s the same) I see a 1-pixel wide artifact that I can’t seem to mask.

Here’s the test code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <title>One pixel menu bug</title>
  <style>
body {
  font-family: sans-serif;
  margin: 0;
}
h1 {margin-bottom: 1em}
#menu {
  padding-top: .3em;
  padding-bottom: 0;
  z-index: 1;
  background: black;
  font-size: 1em;
  margin-top: 0.5em;
}
#menu ul {
  list-style: none;
  border: 0 none;
  padding: 0;
  margin-left: 2em;
  border-bottom: 1px solid black;
}
#menu li {
  display: inline;
  margin-right: .15em;
  background-color: white;
}
#menu li a {
  text-decoration: none;
  color: #99a;
  padding: 0px 12px;

}
#menu a.selected {
  font-weight: bold;
  color: black;
  border-bottom: 2px solid white;
}
  </style>
</head>
<body>
  <h1>Site title here</h1>
  <div id="header">
    <div id="menu">
      <ul>
        <li><a href="#">Are we not men?</a></li>
        <li><a href="#" class="selected">We are Devo</a></li>
      </ul>
    </div>
  </div>
  <p>Lorem ipsum</p>
</body>
</html>

and the result I see with Chrome (left) and Firefox (right):

enter image description here

Removing the font-family line of the style declaration makes the problem disappear, but I don’t want to do that for the main site. Explanations as to what’s going on, or suggestions for work-arounds welcome!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Not all browsers will render the font exactly the same height. Besides, you’re mixing pixel measurements with point measurements (em), which can cause rounding problems too.

    I think you can easily fix this by specifying either a line height, or an exact height for the menu item. And/or set their position relative to the bottom of the menu. As far as I can tell you do neighter, so their exact position is now entirely based on the height of the rendered font.

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