Create The Fanciest Dropdown Menu You Ever Saw
Good evening web designers. I hope you have all had a great weekend, and are ready to start the working week tomorrow. I have something very special to share with you today. Before I begin, I want to remind you of a free website builder called Wix, using which you can create beautiful, professional websites. Now let’s continue…back in June when I wrote the post 21 Beautiful And Creative Navigation Menus, we had a comment from Brian Cray, in which he shared his menu with us. After speaking with Brian, he agreed to write a tutorial for us on how he created his website navigation menu.
Recently he has changed his website design and the layout, but this tutorial is sweet, and one amazing navigation! Here is a bit about Brian…
About Brian…
Brian Cray writes a blog that helps web 2.0 professionals build better websites. Among other things, he is known for his development of Nearby Tweets and PXtoEM.com. Feel free to follow him on Twitter.
Be sure to check out some of the services that Brian provides, and if you have any questions for Brian feel free to drop in a comment and im sure he will reply.
What will you be building?
Contents…
* * * * *
1. Making a basic dropdown that works
Before I begin – for those of you who want an easy way out of this tutorial, you can create a free flash website with Wix that will look like a very professional website. Now for those who are still interested in going through with the tutorial, I will continue. Web designers and developers find themselves creating dropdown menus over and over. I’ve drilled dropdown menu production to a science. Seriously. Here’s the benefits of Brian Cray’s basic dropdown menu code:
- Can be put anywhere on site in a matter of seconds
- Forces no styling on the menu, but adapts to ANY styling
- Can handle multiple dropdown levels gracefully
- Covers variable-width tabs and dropdown menus
- Semantic – only two classes needed on an otherwise plain UL
Here’s what the basic dropdown looks like
Let’s go over my dropdown menu code first as it provides the basis for the fanciest dropdown menu you ever saw.
The basic HTML
You’ve seen this kind of thing a million times. But take notice of the two UL classes: tabs and dropdown.
[html]<ul class=”tabs”>
<li><a href=”#”>Dropdown 1</a>
<ul class=”dropdown”>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 1</a>
<ul class=”dropdown”>
<li><a href=”#”>Submenu item 1</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Submenu item 1</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Submenu item 1</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 2</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 3</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 4</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 5</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 6</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href=”#”>Dropdown 2</a>
<ul class=”dropdown”>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 1</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 2</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 3</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 4</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 5</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 6</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href=”#”>Dropdown 3</a>
<ul class=”dropdown”>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 1</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 2</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 3</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 4</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 5</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 6</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>[/html]
The tabs class makes the first UL a horizontal tab bar. The dropdown class makes the other UL dropdown menus. Simple, right?
The basic CSS
This CSS sets and resets the necessary styles so you don’t have to worry about your menu inheriting a bunch of crap that will make the menu look unexpected.
[css]/* tabs
*************************/
ul.tabs
{
display: table;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
list-style: none;
position: relative;
}
ul.tabs li
{
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
list-style: none;
display: table-cell;
float: left;
position: relative;
}
ul.tabs a
{
position: relative;
display: block;
}
/* dropdowns
*************************/
ul.dropdown
{
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
display: block;
position: absolute;
z-index: 999;
top: 100%;
width: 250px;
display: none;
left: 0;
}
ul.dropdown ul.dropdown
{
top: 0;
left: 95%;
}
ul.dropdown li
{
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
float: none;
position: relative;
list-style: none;
display: block;
}
ul.dropdown li a
{
display: block;
}[/css]
The basic jQuery
The jQuery behind this is genius. It will pick up ANY dropdown class on the page and turn it into a working dropdown menu.
[js]$(function () {
$(‘.dropdown’).each(function () {
$(this).parent().eq(0).hover(function () {
$(‘.dropdown:eq(0)’, this).show();
}, function () {
$(‘.dropdown:eq(0)’, this).hide();
});
});
});[/js]
And that’s all you need to add to each project to create dropdown menus in a flash! Now lets take this concept a step farther and REALLY light up the show.
2. Making the basic menu look fancy
Here’s what the fancy menu looks like that we’ll create below
The first thing to do to make something fancy is to add colors and images.
The images
The fancy HTML: what we’ve changed
- Wrapped everything in a #menu div
- Added h4 elements to add another layer to the menu’s organization
- Added a “hasmore” class to the menu items containing dropdown menus
- Added a “last” class to the last menu item in dropdown menus
- Added a
<span>element around the main menu items
[html]<div id=”menu”>
<ul class=”tabs”>
<li><h4><a href=”#”>In the blog »</a></h4></li>
<li class=”hasmore”><a href=”#”><span>Recent</span></a>
<ul class=”dropdown”>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 1</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 2</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 3</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 4</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu item 5</a></li>
<li class=”last”><a href=”#”>Menu item 6</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class=”hasmore”><a href=”#”><span>Topics</span></a>
<ul class=”dropdown”>
<li><a href=”#”>Topic 1</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Topic 2</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Topic 3</a></li>
<li class=”last”><a href=”#”>Topic 4</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href=”#”><span><strong><img src=”images/feed-icon-14×14.png” width=”14″ height=”14″ alt=”RSS”> Subscribe to RSS</strong></span></a></li>
<li><h4><a href=”#”>Elsewhere »</a></h4></li>
<li><a href=”#”><span>About</span></a></li>
<li class=”hasmore”><a href=”/about/#networks”><span>Networks</span></a>
<ul class=”dropdown”>
<li><a href=”#”>Twitter</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>posterous</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>SpeakerSite</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>LinkedIn</a></li>
<li class=”last”><a href=”#”>See more…</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href=”#”><span>Bookmarks</span></a></li>
</ul>
</div>[/html]
The fancy CSS: what we’ve added
- Added the
* {margin:0; padding:0}simple reset hack (I know, there are better resets) - Styled to body
- Removed underline from links
- Styled the menu heavily
[css]/* hack reset (for production, use Yahoo! reset CSS)
*************************/
*
{
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
/* body
*************************/
body
{
font: 14px/21px Georgia, serif;
color: #370707;
background: #e3d79b url(images/mainbg.jpg) left 40px repeat-x;
}
/* links
*************************/
a:link, a:visited, a:hover, a:active
{
text-decoration: none;
}
/* inline elements
*************************/
strong
{
font-weight: bold;
}
/* menu-specifc
*************************/
#menu
{
position: fixed;
z-index: 5;
top: 0;
left: 0;
width: 100%;
height: 40px;
line-height: 40px;
background: #ffb35a url(images/topbg.gif) repeat-x;
border-bottom: 1px solid #000;
}
#menu ul
{
margin: 0 auto;
}
#menu ul li.hasmore
{
background: url(images/drophighlight.png) no-repeat center 27px;
}
#menu ul li h4
{
margin: 0;
}
#menu ul li h4 a
{
font-size: 14px;
color: #000;
font-weight: bold;
padding: 0 15px;
}
#menu ul li a
{
color: #9b2021;
padding-left: 4px;
}
#menu ul li a img
{
vertical-align: middle;
}
#menu ul li a:hover
{
background: url(images/topselectionleft.png) top left no-repeat;
}
#menu ul li a span
{
display: block;
padding: 0 15px 0 11px;
}
#menu ul li a:hover span
{
background: url(images/topselectionright.png) top right;
}
#menu ul.dropdown
{
padding: 10px;
background-image: url(images/dropdown.png);
overflow:hidden;
border-bottom: 1px solid #dc902f;
width: 290px;
}
#menu ul.dropdown li a
{
border-bottom: 1px solid #e5cd8e;
line-height: 30px;
overflow: hidden;
height: 30px;
}
#menu ul.dropdown li.last a
{
border-bottom-width: 0;
}
#menu ul.dropdown li a:hover
{
background: url(images/menuarrow.png) no-repeat left center;
}
#menu ul li h4 a:hover
{
background-image: none;
}[/css]
The fancy jQuery: what we’ve changed
- Used the hoverIntent jQuery plugin by Brian Cherne instead of jQuery’s default hover to prevent unintended dropdown menus
- Used the easing jQuery plugin by GSGD to add a visual effect to dropdown menu items
- Changed the default dropdown menu show() and hide() functions to slideDown() and fadeOut() to add some pizzazz (without being annoying)
- Preloaded the images necessary to make the menu happen
[js]$(function () {
$(‘.dropdown’).each(function () {
$(this).parent().eq(0).hoverIntent({
timeout: 100,
over: function () {
var current = $(‘.dropdown:eq(0)’, this);
current.slideDown(100);
},
out: function () {
var current = $(‘.dropdown:eq(0)’, this);
current.fadeOut(200);
}
});
});
$(‘.dropdown a’).hover(function () {
$(this).stop(true).animate({paddingLeft: ’35px’}, {speed: 100, easing: ‘easeOutBack’});
}, function () {
$(this).stop(true).animate({paddingLeft: ’0′}, {speed: 100, easing: ‘easeOutBounce’});
});
pic1 = new Image(310, 672);
pic1.src = “images/dropdown.png”;
pic2 = new Image(4, 40);
pic2.src = “images/dropselectionleft.png”;
pic3 = new Image(394, 40);
pic3.src = “images/dropselectionright.png”;
});[/js]
3. The final result with files
Congratulations! You’ve walked through creating the fanciest menu ever! By the way, if you feel frustrated with designing, or just want an easy way out, you can always create a free professional website with Wix.
Here are the files this menu uses:
- fancydropdown.js – combines jQuery, easing plugin, hoverIntent plugin, and fancy dropdown menu code
- fancydropdown.css – combines dropdown menu styling and fancy menu styling
- fancydropdown.html – the HTML of the fancy menu
- fancydropdownimages.zip – all of the images used to create the fancy menu
- fancydropdown.zip – all of the files used to create the fancy menu
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Brian Cray (3 years ago)
Thanks for allowing me the opportunity to write for WebDesignDev. I hope (and I’m sure) people will love it
Len (3 years ago)
Hi,
The Fanciest Dropdown Menu looks great.
But I wondered whether you could help me.
The menu in Dreamweaver is vertical even though in the browser its horizontal.
This makes my layout in Dreamweaver look messy.
Is there any code I have to add to rectify this.
Thanks very much for any advice.
Kind Regards, Len
Maree (3 years ago)
Thanks Brian (and WebDesignDev).
Drop down menus are a mainstay of any serious web developer’s arsenal and most people have their own robust standard way of doing it.
Despite this, there are still thousands of basic tutorials on how to hang them together – all doing things differently, and few nicely.
I have not yet played with JQuery, and I must admit that was the only reason I looked at what I thought would be yet another rehash. I enjoyed reading a well written tutorial and seeing a well built base menu, that become easy to extend.
Most of all, I am now inspired to explore JQuery further, as it no longer looks scary and new, or too complex for the low budget small business sites I do.
Andy (3 years ago)
Jquery is very easy. Just a few lines of code. I always go shopping on their website for my effects, and modify the code for what i want it to do.
Legacy (3 years ago)
i’m new to jquery but love how i’ve redesigned my site using it for horizontal display. this tut is glorious and easy to understand as well as tweek for my client’s design wishes. good stuff…keep it up.
=^,^=
vasu (3 years ago)
nice tuts after long time. thanks
dlv (3 years ago)
this is really nice!! smooth effects and easy to implement … cool, congrats!
thanks for share
SliceMachine (3 years ago)
Really great…thanks
Dec (3 years ago)
Nice, I may have to nick this
Though it would’ve been nice to have the JS seperate from the plugin files.
Dicky (3 years ago)
This tutorial is easy to follow, and i like the smooth animation when you scroll over the links. Thanks!
Xavier (3 years ago)
Thanks Brian for this article. The result is amazing!
Luke (3 years ago)
I’m a huge fan of jQuery and always wondered about the programming of the drop downs on your site ever since I saw your blog Brian. Thanks for the nice tutorial. I definitely picked up some really great tips for my next drop down menu.
Hezi (3 years ago)
ROCK-N-ROLL!!!!
Oliver (3 years ago)
A great tutorial and easy to follow. I’ve never really tried drop down menus on my sites but this tutorial will help a lot. Thanks.
Paulo (3 years ago)
Great article!
One thing to watch out for is this solution requires javascript to open the sub-menus. Ideally we would want to update it to use pure CSS drop-downs (a la Sons of Suckerfish ) while adding the cool affects to those with javascript enabled. Sort of how the Superfish plugin does it
Andy (3 years ago)
Agree with Paulo – plus, the drop downs should open on a:focus in the CSS too, at the moment it only works on hover, making it keyboard-inaccessible.
Brian Cray (3 years ago)
Andy: Good point on the a:focus – never thought of that before!
mary (3 years ago)
Nice one, look forward to giving it a try. Thanks Brian, excellent work
Heru (3 years ago)
Nice……
Moksha Solutions (3 years ago)
I was looking for a menu tutorial. I hope it solve my problem, it look Simple and Great. thanks
web (3 years ago)
this really helped on my site
stian (3 years ago)
Ey! I loved this tutorial, but I kind of have a problem. I cant link some of the “buttons”, and I changed the pics and the “dropdown” pic wont show..
could anyone help me?
Cory (3 years ago)
ahhhh shoot me now not that damn reset.
* { margin: 0; padding: 0; }
That has to be the worst line of CSS ever.
Gus (3 years ago)
This menu was a godsend after I struggled for a week trying other similar ones. But I still have one issue:
In restyling the css for my needs, I’ve somehow affected one selector that now causes IE6 to display headings much larger than the intended size. There’s no problem with FireFox browsers at all.
I should mention that all of the dropdown headings are fine on both browsers. It’s only the main headings that render far too large in IE.
If someone has encountered this and can suggest where I’d look for a remedy, I’m entirely grateful.
Gus (3 years ago)
Ten days have gone by, but nobody’s responded to the post above. If it’s because the problem is a bit bewildering, then let me try to offer more information:
This could be relevent: I always set my body’s font size to 62.5% for reasons I think everyone knows. Accordingly, all fonts seem to work just fine at approximately 1em — or whatever.
I note that the demo for this script displays typefaces the same in IE as they do in Firefox. But I’ve modified my css a bit, mostly removing unused selectors.
Could it be that I’ve changed a selector that’s critical to maintaining the font size in IE? To compensate for the larger font now displayed in IE, I’ve tried a few CSS hacks. This works, of course, but it also creates a different problem: Applying essentially two different font sizes within the container now wreaks havoc with the container’s height and placement.
Help! I’d sure appreciate a few thoughts from anyone who might be able to shed some light.
Mike (3 years ago)
Anybody run into a conflict with other jquery plugins on the same page? Dropdown functionality is lost when I add jquery cycle to the page…thank you.
My Webmaster Tips (3 years ago)
Great article and explanation of the basic menu and with the added abilities of the menu. I think this might be the menu I end up going with thanks to your very well written instructions for use.
plumpnation (3 years ago)
Yeah, I’ve run into not only other jQuery script conflicts that stop the dropdowns working, but also things like lightbox and lightwindow. I’m getting a z-index issue in ie6 too, but that’s probably just something buried in my CSS.
gkiller (3 years ago)
Great tutorial. However, the drop-down menus fall behind other elements in the page when running in IE 7. The z-index is set to 999 for the .dropdown in your CSS and I tried various values for the z-index on each element – still the same behavior.
We have a jQuery news slider that appears below it and the drop menus fall behind the content. We replaced it with a simple div containing a background image – still the same result.
Any ideas or suggestions?
gkiller (3 years ago)
If you look at the demo in IE 7, the menu aligns to the left as opposed to the center in Firefox and Safari. There are also slight positioning differences in IE as compared to Firefox if you start to modify the styles.
Tomislav (3 years ago)
You dude win!
thanks for the tut.
Rahul Rajbhoj (3 years ago)
I like it dude…………………
very cool drop down it is………..
thnxs for sharing with us………………..keep it up.
Spiro K. (3 years ago)
Can you please check the menu functioning when you make the drop down go slower ex. 600) and when you fast move the mouse out and back over the drop down it self!
lisa (3 years ago)
Great tutorial, to bad the line from the jQuery JavaScript Library v1.3.2 makes this not to work with mootools 1.11
There are some other great jquery dropdown menus that do work with mootools and jquery
and are less than 2kb while this one is 45kb.
Thank you for sharing the code
Ashley (3 years ago)
I love this! Thank you so much for sharing, and providing a great tutorial!
Ramsey (3 years ago)
I too love this dropdown but agree with some of the others. Ideally it should downgrade to a CSS only dropdown, something similar to Suckerfish or Son of Suckerfish.
50 Best Web Design Blog Posts In 2009 | Web Design Tutorials | Creating a Website | Learn Adobe Flash, Photoshop and Dreamweaver (3 years ago)
[...] A top tutorial here posted on our blog and written by Brian Cray. This menu is simply fantastic and is an easy tutorial to follow that’s broken up into many different steps for beginners and advanced web designers. Read More [...]
Gus (3 years ago)
I’ve think I’ve tried everything under the sun to reduce line spacing for drop-down menu items. Unless I’m mistaken, no CSS selector seems to have the power to affect the spacing, and this is disappointing for designers who might not want to dedicate the entire space occupied by long drop-down items.
To compensate, I tried adding transparency to a background in the #menu ul.dropdown selector so that when drop-downs overlap page content, the content remains partially visible. Unfortunately there seems to be a bug in the script since transparency is provided on the initial page load but ignored on subsequent hovers.
Aside from these hurdles, this is a lovely menu with lots of flexibility. Still I appreciate any help I might get in solving my own small dilemmas.
Jaka (3 years ago)
thans
Stazh (3 years ago)
Great work! Thanks a lot!
Elijah (3 years ago)
Thanks ! good Job
Best Web Designing Contest (3 years ago)
Wow and wow I loved the new fanciest drop down menu a lot and now I am going to use this technique in my site and then post it in a contest running by grafikguru.com and I am sure I would win the prize.
Greg (3 years ago)
Great work, really like it! I notice that in IE7 (at least) the active tab background image is “cut off” directly above the text… any CSS gurus out there have a fix for this? Excellent menu though, well done!
Dave (3 years ago)
Does anyone know how I can add a second dropdown sub-menu to this?
For instance if you look at the screenshot of the menu at the top of the page, I would like to have another dropdown sub-menu to pop out when I scroll over Topic 1, Topic 2 etc.
Here is the code I tried to add the sub-menu…
Topic 1 »
Topic 1.1
Topic 1.1.1
Topic 1.1.2
Topic 1.1.3
Topic 1.1.4
Topic 2
Topic 3
The sub-menu (topic 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3, 1.1.4) would pop up when I hover over topic 1.1 as it should BUT it is contained inside the original dropdown. In other words when I would hover over topic 1.1 the dropdown would show on like the last 40 pixels or so of the right side of the original dropdown. It would not dropdown to its own container.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to help with this? If anyone needs more info or cant understand what im saying, let me know and ill try to describe it better.
Thanks a lot, I really appreciate it!
Dave (3 years ago)
Forget that question..it was an easy fix, just had to take out the overflow: hidden rule in the #menu ul.dropdown
Thanks, this looks great! Very much appreciate it!
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Ronnie v (3 years ago)
Hey just built a site using this, was testing it works great in Safari, but in Firefox does not work unless Javascript is enabled, which most common people wont even change default settings in their browsers… So what can i do to make sure they get some type of menu if they have Javascript disabled?
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Ian F (3 years ago)
Thanks for the tutorial, I’d like to implement it, but I’m having a problem.
I’d like to separate out the jquery library and have it in its own file to fancydropdown.js. But whenever i try this, the dropdown stops working. This is when I’m even using the same jquery version 1.3.2 as is included in the original js.
Anyone know how to solve this?
Steve (3 years ago)
This menu looks awesome!
I made a change in the css so that when a user is in the drop down menu the “Over State” of main navigation does not disappear.
I replaced the css:
#menu ul li a:hover
{
background: url(images/topselectionleft.png) top left no-repeat;
}
With:
#menu ul li:hover {
background-image:url(../images/backgrounds/nav-hit.gif);
background-repeat:repeat-x;
color:#193b65;
}
#menu ul li:hover a {
color:#193b65;
}
Of course you can change your background image as needed.
Keep up the good work.
canaris (3 years ago)
Why this script block any jquery gallery?
Whats the solution?
I cant find the problem line
When I delete the .js script all image gallerys works fine.
panikkos (3 years ago)
the fancydropdown.js file contains the code of the jquery-1.3.2.min.js file. just split the code and import the two files individually
verti (1 year ago)
Same issue here. Impossible to use fancydropdown with any other type of lightbox.
I did identify the jquery 1.3.2 from fancydropdown.js, and isolated it in a separate js to call him indivually, or to call an other recent jquery instead but the dropdown stop working.
Any other clues guys?
Cheers.
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