How do I justify a horizontal list?

Question

I have a horizontal navbar like the following:

<ul id = "Navigation">     <li><a href = "About.html">About</a></li>     <li><a href = "Contact.html">Contact</a></li>     <!-- ... --> </ul> 

I use CSS to remove the bullet points and make it horizontal.

#Navigation li {     list-style-type: none;     display: inline; } 

I'm trying to justify the text so each link is spread out evenly to fill up the entirety of the ul's space. I tried adding text: justify to both the li and ul selectors, but they're still left-aligned.

#Navigation {     text-align: justify; }  #Navigation li {     list-style-type: none;     display: inline;     text-align: justify; } 

This is strange, because if I use text-align: right, it behaves as expected.

How do I spread out the links evenly?

Answer 1

Modern Approach - CSS3 Flexboxes

Now that we have CSS3 flexboxes, you no longer need to resort to tricks and workarounds in order to make this work. Fortunately, browser support has come a long way, and most of us can start using flexboxes.

Just set the parent element's display to flex and then change the justify-content property to either space-between or space-around in order to add space between/around the children flexbox items. Then add additional vendor prefixes for more browser support.

Using justify-content: space-between - (example here):

ul {     list-style: none;     padding: 0;     margin: 0; } .menu {     display: flex;     justify-content: space-between; }

<ul class="menu">     <li>About</li>     <li>Contact</li>     <li>Contact Longer Link</li>     <li>Contact</li> </ul>

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Using justify-content: space-around - (example here):

ul {     list-style: none;     padding: 0;     margin: 0; } .menu {     display: flex;     justify-content: space-around; }

<ul class="menu">     <li>About</li>     <li>Contact</li>     <li>Contact Longer Link</li>     <li>Contact</li> </ul>