Wont remove divider lines on mouse over

Question

i've been designing an menu for my website. i've reached an issue with converting in to html/css. The idea is to have an divider line on each side of the text and on mouse over the navigation lines will disappear and show the hover image. but whatever i do the line is still there on one of the sides.

An image of my navigation menu

nav-lnie.png: is just only the line hover.png is the whole mouseover image

does anybody have a solution or an explanation how to do this?

css looks like this:

.navigation{
width:370px; 
float:left;
position: absolute;
left: 300px;
background:url(../images/nav-lnie.png) repeat-y 0 0;
padding:0 0 0 4px; font-size:14px;
font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
color:#fff; text-shadow:1px 1px 1px #333
}

.navigation ul li{background:url(../images/nav-lnie.png) repeat-y right 0;
margin:0 2px 0 0; 
}

.navigation ul li a{
display:block;
float:left;
width:90px;
height:38px;
padding:70px 0 0 0;
text-align:center;
color:#fff;
text-decoration:none;
}

.navigation ul li a:hover{
background:url(../images/hover.png) repeat-x;
}

And html like this:

<div class="navigation">
    <ul>
       <li><a href="index.php">Videos</a></li>
       <li><a href="top.php">Top Videos</a></li>
       <li><a href="upload_video.php">Upload</a></li>
       <li><a href="faq.php">FAQ</a></li>
    </ul>
</div>

Answer 1

It's most likely due to the margin code you have here:

.navigation ul li{
    background:url(../images/nav-lnie.png) repeat-y right 0;
    margin:0 2px 0 0; 
}

Since there's a 2px margin on the right of each menu item, the left margin won't get hidden if you mouse over the next element. If the margin isn't really needed, you can remove it and it should work fine, given that there's enough space. If it's necessary, then on the hover command, you can change the spacing on the element:

.navigation ul li a:hover{
    background:url(../images/hover.png) repeat-x;
    margin-left: -2px;
    padding-left: 2px;
}

Of course, it's a rough hack to fix the problem. Spacing can be adjusted on both ends as well.