css background-position not working

Question

I have 3 a tags disguised as "roll over buttons".

<div id="buttons">
    <a class='button' id='but1' href=''></a>
    <a class='button' id='but2' href=''></a>
    <a class='button' id='but3' href=''></a>
</div>

Each button is getting its initial image from the CSS as follows:

.button{
    background:url(theimage.jpg);
    width;height; etc...
}

Now, when i try to assign initial background position for each specific element as such:

#but1{
    background-position:0 0;
}
#but1:hover{
    background-position:0 -50px;
}

#but2{
    background-position:0 -100px;
}
#but2:hover{
    background-position:0 -150px;
}

#but3{
    background-position:0 -200px;
}
#but3:hover{
    background-position:0 -250px;
}

The Issue: each button defaults to position 0 0

Note that the hover positions work as expected.

I'm kind of sick right now so this is probably an oversight but I've been stairing at this for an hour now and can't figure it out.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

EDIT pastebin love http://pastebin.com/SeZkjmHa

Answer 1

I'm not reproducing your issue. Which browser?

Initial thought (without seeing an error case) is to change your initial background definition from a full 'background:' to a background-image declaration:

.button{
  background-image:url(theimage.jpg);
  width;height; etc...
}

By setting background, which is a container for background-position, some browsers may have issues with specificity issues there.

Answer 2

Split up the "background" shorthand property.

If you omit one of the entries in a shorthand property, the omitted entry is reset to the default rather than simply being left alone.

So what's happening is more-or-less the equivalent of this:

#someElement {
    background-position:0 -100px;
    background:url(image.png) no-repeat;
    /* ^--- omitted background-position gets reset to the default */
}

Break the shorthand into different entries:

#someElement {
    background-image:url(image.png);
    background-repeat:no-repeat;
}

EDIT: In your code, the background-position values come after the background values... But I'm pretty sure that the #buttons .button selector is more specific than the #retain-our-firm and similar selectors, meaning that its rule takes precedence over the others even though the others come after.