Expand <a> to occupy the <li> element within the menu

Encountering a bit of a challenge... Is there a way to expand my <a> elements to completely fill the <li> containers they are placed in?

I'm aiming to enhance the accessibility of the links for easier clicking.

Check out my jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/T9nkf/

<nav class="main-nav">
    <ul>
        <li class="menu-category"><a href="#">Link</a>
            <ul>
                <li class="menu-item"><a href="#">Topic</a></li>
                <li class="menu-item"><a href="#">Topic</a></li>
                <li class="menu-item"><a href="#">Topic</a></li>
            </ul>
        </li>
        <li class="menu-category"><a href="#">Link</a>
            <ul>
                <li class="menu-item"><a href="#">Topic</a></li>
                <li class="menu-item"><a href="#">Topic</a></li>
                <li class="menu-item"><a href="#">Topic</a></li>
                <li class="menu-item"><a href="#">Topic</a></li>
            </ul>
        </li>
        <li class="menu-category"><a href="#">Link</a>
            <ul>
                <li class="menu-item"><a href="#">Topic</a></li>
                <li class="menu-item"><a href="#">Topic</a></li>
            </ul>
        </li>
        <li class="menu-category"><a href="#">Link</a>
            <ul>
                <li class="menu-item"><a href="#">Topic</a></li>
                <li class="menu-item"><a href="#">Topic</a></li>
                <li class="menu-item"><a href="#">Topic</a></li>
                <li class="menu-item"><a href="#">Topic</a></li>
            </ul>
        </li>
    </ul>
</nav>
htmlcss

Answer №1

The most intelligent approach would be to set the (the a's) to display: block, however, they may still not occupy the entire space of your li due to padding. To solve this, eliminate the padding from the li elements. If necessary, only assign a size to them and incorporate all other styling, such as padding, to the a elements themselves.

Answer №2

My recommendation is to avoid styling the list items directly with CSS and instead strip away most of their styling, keeping only essential styles and utilizing anchor elements for better structure and functionality.

Answer №3

Aha! I finally cracked the code! All I needed was to apply display:inline-block; and padding:0; to the <li> elements. By allowing the <a> tags to handle the padding, they were able to fill the <li> containers perfectly.

Here is the solution I came up with: http://jsfiddle.net/T9nkf/1/

Big shoutout to everyone who pitched in with their help, couldn't have done it without you all!

Answer №4

If you're utilizing Bootstrap, you may want to leverage the stretched-link class:

<div class="card" style="width: 18rem;">
  <img src="..." class="card-img-top" alt="...">
  <div class="card-body">
    <h5 class="card-title">Card with stretched link</h5>
    <p class="card-text">Some quick example text</p>
    <a href="#" class="btn btn-primary stretched-link">Go somewhere</a>
  </div>
</div>

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