Pseudo Class Last Child - css

Question

I'm trying to achieve the separator effect using border-right on my menu.
Here's my css code
ul.navigation li a {
text-decoration:none;
float:left;
width:252px;
height:50px;
display:block;
background-color:#ccc;
text-align:center;
line-height:45px;
color:#000;
position:relative;
border-right:1px solid #333;
}
ul.navigation li a:last-child {
border:none;
}
What am I doing wrong? I tried border-left and :first-child too.

Answer 1

I am thinking you mean to do this
ul.navigation li:first-child a
Because every a is the first child of its parent li. You mean the a inside the first li item. :)

Answer 2

Your CSS snippet is full of bad practices.
Below is an example of how you should style it and how you can add a separator between each list item.
.navigation { overflow: hidden; } /* Explanation 1 */
.navigation li { float: left; }
.navigation li + li { /* Explanation 2 */
border-left: 1px solid #333;
}
.navigation li a {
display: block;
width: 252px; /* Explanation 3 */
padding: 5px 0; /* Explanation 4 */
background-color:#ccc;
color:#000;
text-align:center;
}
Float containment: read this article.
Here I answer your question: applies a border left from the 2nd li to the last one, using the adiacent sibling selector +.
Are you sure you want to have a fixed width?
No fixed height and line-height to vertically align the text. line-height doen't need a unit by the way. Read this article.
Here is a live example: http://dabblet.com/gist/4968063