This is a demonstration of using the CSS 'clip' property to delimit inline list elements. It works in both browsers that do not supported generated content, such as IE.
The first example is an list that is absolutely positioned to the page, where the second uses absolute positioning with auto alignment.
Because it is necessary to make the clipped region absolutely positioned, layout is a bit more challenging. At this point I have not figured out a way to align the list to the center. Aligning the list to the right is just a matter of swapping the background image to the right and clipping on the right side of the list.