CSS: anchor will NOT accept height

Question

I have been pulling my hair our for over an hour on this and I just can't understand why it's not working.

HTML:

<div id="mainmenu">
    <div class="menu">
        <ul>
            <li class="page_item page-item-6"><a href="http://localhost/mysite/blog/">Blog</a></li>
            <li class="page_item page-item-4 current_page_item"><a href="http://localhost/mysite/">Front Page</a></li>
            <li class="page_item page-item-2"><a href="http://localhost/mysite/sample-page/">Sample Page</a></li>
        </ul>
    </div>
</div>

CSS:

div#mainmenu { position: absolute; top: 40px; right: 0; font-size: 77%; }
div#mainmenu div.menu ul,
div#mainmenu div.menu ul li,
div#mainmenu div.menu ul li a
{
    height: 36px;
}
div#mainmenu div.menu ul {  
    display: table;
    float: left;
    width: 700px;
    table-layout: fixed;

    position: relative;
}
div#mainmenu div.menu ul li
{
    display: table-cell;
    padding: 0 10px;
    overflow: hidden;
}
div#mainmenu div.menu ul li a
{
    width: auto;
    background: none;
    margin: 10px auto;
}

Solution 1

Change div#mainmenu div.menu ul li a to this:

div#mainmenu div.menu ul li a
{
    display: block;
    width: auto;
    background: none;
    margin: 10px auto;
}

a elements are inline by default and you cannot set the height / width of inline elements.

Solution 2

The default display type for a link is inline, which does not respond to height or width. Instead, tell your links to be inline-blocks, which preserves the flow of the links but makes them respect your request to be a specific size (height).

div#mainmenu div.menu ul li a
{
    display:inline-block;
    height:36px;
}

Solution 3

Try line height instead of height:

line-height:36px

http://jsfiddle.net/AlienWebguy/dP4F9/

Comments

[AlienWebguy]

inline-block would probably be more appropriate but this is definitely an option.

[Léon Pelletier]

Would be glad to see this in a simple example. Like 3 lines.

[AlienWebguy]

That's why there is a JSFiddle link to an example.