CSS puzzle: How to add background-image and set height/width on empty span?

Question

I've set background-image on a couple of span elements, but they aren't showing up, I think because my height and width settings are being ignored.

HTML source:

<div class="textwidget">
<a href="#" title="Start here"><span id="starthere" class="sidebar-poster"></span></a> 
<a href="#" title="Primary documents"><span id="#primarydocs" class="sidebar-poster"></span></a> 
<a href="#" title="Donate"><span id="donate" class="sidebar-poster"></span></a>
</div> 

CSS:

span.sidebar-poster {
    margin-bottom: 10px;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    width: 160px;
}
span#starthere { 
    background-image: url(/betatesting/wp-content/themes/dynamik/css/images/brunelwantsyou180.jpg);
    height: 285px;
} 
span#starthere:hover { 
    background-image: url(/betatesting/wp-content/themes/dynamik/css/images/brunelwantsyou_hover.jpg);
} 
span#primarydocs { 
    background-image: url(/betatesting/wp-content/themes/dynamik/css/images/brunelwantsyou180.jpg);
    height: 285px;
} 
span#primarydocs:hover { 
    background-image: url(/betatesting/wp-content/themes/dynamik/css/images/brunelwantsyou_hover.jpg);
} 
span#donate { 
    background-image: url(/betatesting/wp-content/themes/dynamik/css/images/donatebutton.jpg);
    height: 285px;
} 
span#donate:hover { 
    background-image: url(/betatesting/wp-content/themes/dynamik/css/images/donateposter_hover.jpg);
} 

None of the background images are actually visible.

In Chrome Developer Tools, Under Computed Style, these two spans do appear to have a background image. If I copy and paste the URL of this image, I see the image. Yet nothing is actually rendering.

[UPDATE - this part is solved, thanks] In Chrome Developer Tools, under Matched Rules, only the #starthere and #donate spans are actually picking up the background-image attribute. The #primarydocs span is not. Why not?

Answer 1

SPAN is an inline element. Which will indeed ignore such things. Try setting the display mode in your CSS to something like: display: block;