CSS - Full width problem still occurring with position absolute-CodePudding

I am trying to automatically set the width of two elements to fit their contents properly. When I tried to use position: absolute these elements would overlap each over.

body {
  color: black;
  background-color: white;
  font-family: monospace;
}

li {
  position: absolute;
  list-style: none;
  border: 1px solid black;
  margin: 1%;
}

a {
  color: black;
  text-decoration: none;
}

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en" dir="ltr">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="/styles/style.css">
    <title>FrontEnd Developer</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <header>
      <nav>
        <ul>
          <div class="navigation_item">
            <li><a href="#about">about</a></li>
          </div>
          <div class="navigation_item">
            <li><a href="#contact">contact</a></li>
          </div>
        </ul>
      </nav>
    </header>
  </body>
</html>

CodePudding user response：

There are countless ways to do this but I tried to do it based on what you have already.

 body {
    color: black;
    background-color: white;
    font-family: monospace;
}

.navigation_item {
  display: flex;
}

li {
  list-style: none;
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: row;
  border: 1px solid black;
  padding: 12px;
  margin: 3px;
}

a {
  color: black;
  text-decoration: none;
}

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

<head>
  <meta name="viewport"
    content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no, shrink-to-fit=no" />

</head>


<header>
  <nav>
    <ul>
      <div class="navigation_item">
        <li><a href="#about">about</a></li>
        <li><a href="#contact">this can be as long or as short as you want</a></li>
      </div>
    </ul>
  </nav>
</header>

</html>