If you have ever been frustrated with impossible to click links on site navigation menus, email this 37signals blog post to the sitemaster.
Basically the technique of padding links has been around for a long time, but has been largely ignored when implementing the HTML. Many designs encorporate large areas around links, yet there’s a grey-area as to whether these areas should be clickable as well. I think that anything which makes it easy for the user should be done, and done well.
Padding link targets for better mousing [37signals]