Getting Rid of White Spaces Between Items (Using Font-Size Trick)

by Konstantin Rouda

HTML

<script src="&lt;link href=&quot;https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Source+Sans+Pro:400,600,700&quot; rel=&quot;stylesheet&quot;&gt;"></script>
<script src="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Source+Sans+Pro:400,600,700"></script>
<nav class="navbar">
  <ul class="navbar__menu">
    <li class="navbar__menu__item"><a href="#">Home</a></li>
    <li class="navbar__menu__item"><a href="#">Chips</a></li>
    <li class="navbar__menu__item"><a href="#">Spaghetti</a></li>
    <li class="navbar__menu__item"><a href="#">Meat</a></li>
  </ul>
</nav>

CSS

HTML {
  line-height: 1.5;
  box-sizing: border-box;
}

*, *:before, *:after {
  box-sizing: inherit;
}

BODY {
  font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', sans-serif;
  padding: 0; margin: 0;
}

.navbar__menu {
  list-style: none;
  padding: 0;
  margin-top: 0;
  font-size: 0; /* helps us to get rid of the whitespaces between li items*/
  background-color: #486a8e;
}

.navbar__menu__item {
  display: inline-block;
  width: 25%;
  background-color: #12459e;
  outline: 1px solid #fff;
  font-size: 1rem; /* because we've set font-size on parent as 0, we now return it to font-size defined on HTML tag*/
  text-align: center;
  text-transform: uppercase;
  transition: background-color .5s linear;
}

.navbar__menu__item:hover {
  background-color: #306dd8;
}

.navbar__menu__item A {
  display: block;
  padding: 1em;
  color: #fff;
  text-decoration: none;
}