CSS/HTML navigation centering confusion - html

Question

so this is how my navigation looks:
Quite unbalanced right.. my minds kinda fkd up. I have no idea what I am doing already. I'd like to ask some help how to center it out. This is the code of the css:
.navigation {
width: 886px;
height: 84px;
background: url('../img/nav_bg.png') no-repeat;
margin: 0 auto;
}
.navigation ul {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
list-style: none outside;
padding-top: 22px;
padding-left: 63px;
}
.navigation ul li {
display: inline-block;
list-style-type: none;
}
.navigation ul li a {
display: block;
text-align: center;
line-height: 40px;
color: #fff;
text-decoration: none;
padding-left: 16px;
padding-right: 16px;
text-transform: uppercase;
font-size: 14px;
}

Answer 1

Flexbox is not yet 100% supported cross-browser
As you can see from this link: http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox
Flebox nowadays is quite well supported but if you carefully look at those symbols on each square you notice that the support is not full but partial on some browsers (especially mobile).
Global (with prefix)
82.47% + 10.5% = 92.97%
unprefixed:
71.8% + 0.38% = 72.18%
You should to add a prefix if you really want to use it.
**
Using a different method - display:table;
**
On the other hand, I suggest you to use another approach which is much more stable and supported on all browsers:
Look at the support of display:table;
Link: http://caniuse.com/#search=display%3Atable
To solve your problem you can remove all your padding-top with fixed values and use vertical-align:middle and display:table-cell. This way no matter what is the height of the ul it will be always vertically centered.
Center horizontally the ul element using text-align:center;
Center vertically the ul by setting the .navigation container with display:table; and the ul element with display:table-cell; and vertical-align:middle;
Code example:
.navigation {
width: 100%;
height: 84px;
background: lightgrey;
margin: 0 auto;
display:table;
}
.navigation ul {
padding: 0;
list-style: none outside;
text-align:center;
display:table-cell;
vertical-align:middle;
}
.navigation ul li {
display: inline-block;
list-style-type: none;
}
.navigation ul li a {
display: block;
text-align: center;
line-height: 40px;
color: #fff;
text-decoration: none;
padding-left: 16px;
padding-right: 16px;
text-transform: uppercase;
font-size: 14px;
}
Check Jsfiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/a_incarnati/bmkspm69/1/

Answer 2

Flexbox might be able to help you here. To center your li's with flexbox all you would have to do is add these styles to .navigation ul
.navigation ul{
display:flex;
justify-content: center;
align-items:center;
}

Answer 3

Give a text-align: center to the ul.
In general, for centering some elements inside a parent, parent should have text-align:center and the childs should have display: inline-block or display: inline.
HTML:
<ul>
<li>A</li>
<li>B</li>
<ul>
CSS:
ul {
width: 400px;
text-align: center;
}
li {
display: inline-block;
}