Styling List Buttons

Using a list, I want to create a list of links as in the image

<div id="toolbarbottom" class="toolbar" style="position: fixed; clear: both; overflow: visible; bottom: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%;">
     <ul>
         <li id="active"><span><a id="current" href="#add" class="button">News</a></span></li>
         <li><span> <a href="#Updates" class="button">Updates</a></span> </li>
         <li><span><a href="#Contact" class="button">Contact Us</a></span></li>
         <li><span><a href="#Website" class="button">We开发者_StackOverflowbsite</a> </span></li>
         <li><span><a href="#Refresh" id="#Refresh" class="button">Refresh</a></span> </li>
     </ul>
</div>

I am kind of stuck on the CSS (button) and probably the spacing between the list elements. to make the list appear in this form. Anyone with an idea of how I can tackle this please?

or another way is to use floats, and make the ul display: inline-block to contain the floated li's

you need to slightly change the HTML so the span is inside the a - this is so you can hide the spanned text, but keep the image background and clickable area for the a elements, also I'd give each link a unique reference (class or ID) so the backgrounds can be applied separately.

example HTML:

<div id="toolbarbottom" class="toolbar" style="position: fixed; top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%;">
     <ul>
         <li class="active"><a href="#add" id="madd"><span>News</span></a></li>
         <li><a href="#Updates" id="mupdates"><span> Updates</span></a></li>
         <li><a href="#Contact" id="mcontact"><span>Contact Us</span></a></li>
         <li><a href="#Website" id="mwebsite"><span>Website </span></a></li>
         <li><a href="#Refresh" id="mrefresh"><span>Refresh</span></a> </li>
     </ul>
</div>

you can then put the whole background on the ul and put the individual images on each link.

#toolbarbottom ul {
   list-style: none; 
   margin: 0; 
   padding: 0; 
   display: inline-block; 
   width: 100%; 
   background: #ff0;
}

#toolbarbottom li {
   float: left; 
   width: 80px; 
   height: 80px; 
   border: 1px solid #000; /* not required, just to show where individual links are */
} 

#toolbarbottom li a { /* make link fill the li element */
   display: block; 
   height: 80px; 
}

#toolbarbottom li span { /* hide the text */
   position: absolute;
   clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);
   clip: rect (1px 1px 1px 1px);
}

/* couple examples of where to put individual backgrounds */   
#toolbarbottom #mupdates {background: #dad;}
#toolbarbottom #mcontact {background: #0f0;} 

fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/YaS9J/

css

#toolbarbottom li {
    display:inline-block;
    padding:0 10px;  
}

/* if you have one */
#toolbarbottom li img {
    display:block;   
}

You should first set up your css as an external style sheet rather than hard code it into your html. (See http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/present/styles.html for more on this). To add spacing between the li elements you can use the css cascade to add some bottom padding as follows:

#toolbarbottom ul li {
    padding-bottom:4px;
}

To make the list appear inline you would use:

#toolbarbottom ul{
    list-style: none;
    display: inline;
    padding-left: 0;
    margin-left: 0;
}

Those button look like images, so to achieve that you'd just include them within each li element:

<li><a href="example.com"><img src="/path/to/image.jpg"></a></li>