Anchor (<a>) dimensions with only inline-block spans inside

Could someone explain me what's going on with this small piece of HTML ?

http://jsbin.com/akome5

On most of current browsers (FF4, Chrome10, IE9, IE8, Opera 11), the layout of the element looks like this :

Meh?! I don't understand开发者_StackOverflow why ?! Why aren't the height and width as big as the visible box (orange+red spaces) ?

Adding a "display:inline-block;" to the element doesn't seems to really fix it. How can I fix it ?

Thx!!

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• Setting a width and height on an A tag

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Try adding the following styles.

a.button {
    display: block;
    float: left;
    overflow: auto;
}
a.button span {
    display: block;
    float: left;
}

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I'd propose a different approach involving no spans

html:

<a class="button2" href="#">Text Text Text</a>

css:

/* Button 2 */
.button2 {
    background-color:red;
    border:solid 10px orange;
    border-top:0;
    border-bottom:0;
    display:inline-block;
    color:#fff;
    font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
    font-size:11px;
    font-weight:bold;
    line-height:30px;
    text-decoration:none;
    padding:0 3px;
}

old (top) new (bottom)

http://jsfiddle.net/pxfunc/vr7gJ/

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For information I manage to do it without float:left, here is the whole CSS :

a.button{
    display: inline-block; /* <- added */
    text-decoration: none;
}

a.button span{
    display: inline-block;
    font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
    font-size: 11px;
    font-weight: bold;
    height: 30px;
    line-height: 30px; /* <- added */
    text-decoration: none;
}

a.button .left, a.button .right{
    background-color: orange;
    width: 10px;
}

a.button .text{
    background-color: red;
    color: white;
}

The line-height instruction was the key.