css hover upon a link to fill background

Question

what I want:

when i hover upon a link it should fill the background with a fixed width (say 225px) background color. the length of the text of the link should not be considered.

thank you so much.

Answer 1

a:hover {background: url('some225pxWideImage.jpg') no-repeat;}

Answer 2

HTML:

<a class="someclass">Some link</a>

CSS:

a.someclass {
    display: block;
    width: 225px;
}

a.someclass:hover {
    background-color: #123456;
}