Putting Images Inside a BUTTON Element (HTML & CSS)

Question

I have a simple button (as shown below) on which I need to display two pictures, one on either side of the button text. Im battling to create the CSS that will work in both

Answer 1

Here is how to do it

The Theory

Block elements (like DIV) although displayed in order of creation, will position themselves adjacent to the previous element or when short of space, on the next line. Because we dont want to give the button a width (we want the button to be automatically sized based on the content of the button) the block elements continued to appear on the next line (see IE8 image in the question above). Using white-space:nowrap forces inline elements (like SPAN and EM) to be displayed on the same line, but is ignored by block elements, hence the solution below.

CSS

button{
    margin: 0px;
    padding: 0px;
    font-family:Lucida Sans MS, Tahoma;
    font-size: 12px;
    color: #000; 
    white-space:nowrap;
    width:auto;
    overflow:visible;
    height:28px;
}

button em{
    vertical-align:middle;
    margin:0 2px;
    display:inline-block;
    width:16px;
    height:16px;
    background-image: url(images/ui-icons_3d3d3d_256x240.png);      
}

button em.leftImage{
    background-position: -96px -112px;
}

button em.rightImage{
    background-position: -64px -16px;
}

HTML

Button

The Result

Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8 and Firefox 1.5, 2, 3