Vertical dividers on horizontal UL menu - html

Question

I'm trying to create a horizontal navigation bar (no dropdown, just a horizontal list), but I'm having trouble finding the best way to add vertical dividers between the menu items.
The actual HTML is as follows:
<ul>
<li>Item 1</li>
<li>Item 2</li>
<li>Item 3</li>
<li>Item 4</li>
<li>Item 5</li>
</ul>
The current CSS is as follows:
.menu li {
display: inline;
margin-left: 25px;
padding-left: 25px;
}
Between each menu item I want a small image as a vertical divider, except that I don't want a divider shown before the first item and I don't want a divider shown after the second item.
The end result should look something like this:
Item 1 | Item 2 | Item 3 | Item 4 | Item 5
Just replacing the pipe with an actual image.
I've tried different ways - I've tried setting the list-style-image property, but the image didn't show up. I've also tried setting the divider as a background which actually more or less worked except that it made the first item have a divider in front of it.

Answer 1

Quite and simple without any "having to specify the first element". CSS is more powerful than most think (e.g. the first-child:before is great!). But this is by far the cleanest and most proper way to do this, at least in my opinion it is.
#navigation ul
{
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
#navigation ul li
{
list-style-type: none;
display: inline;
}
#navigation li:not(:first-child):before {
content: " | ";
}
Now just use a simple unordered list in HTML and it'll populate it for you. HTML should look like this:
<div id="navigation">
<ul>
<li>Home</li>
<li>About Us</li>
<li>Support</li>
</ul>
</div><!-- navigation -->
The result will be just like this:
HOME | ABOUT US | SUPPORT
Now you can indefinitely expand and never have to worry about order, changing links, or your first entry. It's all automated and works great!

Answer 2

try this one, seeker:
li+li { border-left: 1px solid #000000 }
this will affect only adjecent li elements
found here

Answer 3

This can also be done via CSS:pseudo-classes. Support isn't quite as wide and the answer above gives you the same result, but it's pure CSS-y =)
.ULHMenu li { border-left: solid 2px black; }
.ULHMenu li:first-child { border: 0px; }
OR:
.ULHMenu li { border-right: solid 2px black; }
.ULHMenu li:last-child { border: 0px; }
See: http://www.quirksmode.org/css/firstchild.html
Or: http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/sel_firstchild.asp

Answer 4

I think your best shot is a border-left property that is assigned to each one of the lis except the first one (You would have to give the first one a class named first and explicitly remove the border for that).
Even if you are generating the <li> programmatically, assigning a first class should be easy.

Answer 5

A simpler solution would be to just add #navigation ul li~li { border-left: 1px solid #857D7A; }

Answer 6

.last { border-right: none
.last { border-right: none !important; }

Answer 7

This works fine for me:
NB I'm using BEM/OCSS SCSS Syntax
#navigation{
li{
&:after{
content: '|'; // use content for box-sizing
text-indent: -999999px; // Hide the content
display: block;
float: right; // Position
width: 1px;
height: 100%; // The 100% of parent (li)
background: black; // The color
margin: {
left: 5px;
right: 5px;
}
}
&:last-child{
&:after{
content: none;
}
}
}
}

Answer 8

I do it as Pekka says. Put an inline style on each <li>:
style="border-right: solid 1px #555; border-left: solid 1px #111;"
Take off first and last as appropriate.