Inline elements shifting when made bold on hover

I created a horizontal menu using a HTML lists and CSS. Everything works as it should except when you hover over the links. You see, I created a bold hover state for the links, and now the menu links shift because of the bold size difference.

I encounter the same problem as this SitePoint post. However, the post does not have proper solution. I've searched everywhere for a solution and can't find one. Surely I can't be the only one trying to do this.

Does anyone have any ideas?

P.S: I don't know the width of the text in menu items so I cannot just set the width of the li items.

.nav { margin: 0; padding: 0; }
.nav li { 
    list-style: none; 
    display: inline; 
    border-left: #ffffff 1px solid; 
}
.nav li a:link, .nav li a:visited { 
    text-decoration: none; 
    color: #000; 
    margin-left: 8px; 
    margin-right: 5px; 
}
.nav li a:hover{ 
    text-decoration: none; 
    font-weight: bold; 
}
.nav li.first { border: none; }

<ul class="nav">
    <li class="first"><a href="#">item 0</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">item 1</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">item 2</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">item 3</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">item 4</a></li>
</ul>

Pre-set the width by using an invisible pseudo-element which has the same content and styling as the parent hover style. Use a data attribute, like title, as the source for content.

li {
    display: inline-block;
    font-size: 0;
}

li a {
    display:inline-block;
    text-align:center;
    font: normal 16px Arial;
    text-transform: uppercase;
}

a:hover {
    font-weight:bold;
}

/* SOLUTION */
/* The pseudo element has the same content and hover style, so it pre-sets the width of the element and visibility: hidden hides the pseudo element from actual view. */
a::before {
    display: block;
    content: attr(title);
    font-weight: bold;
    height: 0;
    overflow: hidden;
    visibility: hidden;
}

<ul>
    <li><a href="#" title="height">height</a></li>
    <li><a href="#" title="icon">icon</a></li>
    <li><a href="#" title="left">left</a></li>
    <li><a href="#" title="letter-spacing">letter-spacing</a></li>
    <li><a href="#" title="line-height">line-height</a></li>
</ul>

A compromised solution is to fake bold with text-shadow, e.g:

text-shadow: 0 0 0.01px black;

For better comparison I created these examples:

a, li {
  color: black;
  text-decoration: none;
  font: 18px sans-serif;
  letter-spacing: 0.03em;
}
li {
  display: inline-block;
  margin-right: 20px;
  color: gray;
  font-size: 0.7em;
}
.bold-x1 a.hover:hover,
.bold-x1 a:not(.hover) {
  text-shadow: 0 0 .01px black;
}
.bold-x2 a.hover:hover,
.bold-x2 a:not(.hover){
  text-shadow: 0 0 .01px black, 0 0 .01px black;
}
.bold-x3 a.hover:hover,
.bold-x3 a:not(.hover){
  text-shadow: 0 0 .01px black, 0 0 .01px black, 0 0 .01px black;
}
.bold-native a.hover:hover,
.bold-native a:not(.hover){
  font-weight: bold;
}

.bold-native li:nth-child(4),
.bold-native li:nth-child(5){
 margin-left: -6px;
 letter-spacing: 0.01em;
}

<ul class="bold-x1">
  <li><a class="hover" href="#">Home</a></li>
  <li><a class="hover" href="#">Products</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">Contact</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">About</a></li>
  <li>Bold (text-shadow x1)</li>
</ul>
<ul class="bold-x2">
  <li><a class="hover" href="#">Home</a></li>
  <li><a class="hover" href="#">Products</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">Contact</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">About</a></li>
  <li>Extra Bold (text-shadow x2)</li>
</ul>
<ul class="bold-native">
  <li><a class="hover" href="#">Home</a></li>
  <li><a class="hover" href="#">Products</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">Contact</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">About</a></li>
  <li>Bold (native)</li>
</ul>
<ul class="bold-x3">
  <li><a class="hover" href="#">Home</a></li>
  <li><a class="hover" href="#">Products</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">Contact</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">About</a></li>
  <li>Black (text-shadow x3)</li>
</ul>

Passing to text-shadow really low value for blur-radius will make the blurring effect not so apparent.

In general the more your repeat text-shadow the bolder your text will get but in the same time loosing original shape of the letters.

I should warn you that setting the blur-radius to fractions is not going to render the same in all browsers! Safari for example need bigger values to render it the same way Chrome will do.

Another idea is using letter-spacing

li, a { display: inline-block; }
a {
  font-size: 14px;
  padding-left: 10px;
  padding-right: 10px;
  letter-spacing: 0.235px
}

a:hover, a:focus {
  font-weight: bold;
  letter-spacing: 0
}

<ul>
  <li><a href="#">item 1</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">item 2</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">item 3</a></li>
</ul>

Inline elements shifting when made bold on hover

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