How to Make a pure CSS Dropdown Menu Without Images

Filed under: Design — Tags: Code, CSS, HTML, Web

What a dropdown menu provides is a hierarchical overview of the subsections contained within the menu item that spawned it. Basically, it lists all the subsections within a section of a site when you hover your mouse cursor over it.

They are extremely useful in showing what a section of a site contains, and allowing you to access it from anyway else in that site, whether that be the parent page of that subsection, or a page in a different section altogether.

The markup

A lot of dropdown menus rely on bulky, extraneous markup and Javascript to work, ours will use only the cleanest HTML and some lean CSS, with some lovely progressive CSS3 for good measure.

<ul id="nav">
	<li>
		<a href="#">Home</a>
	</li>

	<li>
		<a href="#">About</a>
		<ul>
			<li><a href="#">The product</a></li>

			<li><a href="#">Meet the team</a></li>
		</ul>
	</li>
	<li>
		<a href="#">Services</a>

		<ul>
			<li><a href="#">Sevice one</a></li>
			<li><a href="#">Sevice two</a></li>

			<li><a href="#">Sevice three</a></li>
			<li><a href="#">Sevice four</a></li>
		</ul>

	</li>
	<li>
		<a href="#">Product</a>
		<ul>
			<li><a href="#">Small product (one)</a></li>

			<li><a href="#">Small product (two)</a></li>
			<li><a href="#">Small product (three)</a></li>
			<li><a href="#">Small product (four)</a></li>

			<li><a href="#">Big product (five)</a></li>
			<li><a href="#">Big product (six)</a></li>
			<li><a href="#">Big product (seven)</a></li>

			<li><a href="#">Big product (eight)</a></li>
			<li><a href="#">Enourmous product (nine)</a></li>
			<li><a href="#">Enourmous product (ten)</a></li>

			<li><a href="#">Enourmous product (eleven)</a></li>
		</ul>
	</li>
	<li>
		<a href="#">Contact</a>

		<ul>
			<li><a href="#">Out-of-hours</a></li>
			<li><a href="#">Directions</a></li>

		</ul>
	</li>
</ul>

As you can see here the markup is simply a series of nested <ul>s. No verbose IDs/classes, no <div>s, just rich, semantic code.

The #nav <ul> contains a series of <li>s, and any that require a dropdown then contain another <ul>. Notice the dropdown <ul>s have no classes on them—this is because we use the cascade to style these, keeping our markup even cleaner.

The CSS

This is where the magic happens—we use CSS to transform a series of nested <ul>s into a smooth, easy to use, neat and self-contained dropdown menu.

/*--- NAV ---*/
#nav{
	list-style:none;
	font-weight:bold;
	margin-bottom:10px;
	/* Clear floats */
	float:left;
	width:100%;
	/* Bring the nav above everything else--uncomment if needed.
	position:relative;
	z-index:5;
	*/
}
#nav li{
	float:left;
	margin-right:10px;
	position:relative;
}
#nav a{
	display:block;
	padding:5px;
	color:#fff;
	background:#333;
	text-decoration:none;
}
#nav a:hover{
	color:#fff;
	background:#69C;
	text-decoration:underline;
}

/*--- DROPDOWN ---*/
#nav ul{
	background:#fff; /* Adding a background makes the dropdown work properly in IE7+. Make this as close to your page's background as possible (i.e. white page == white background). */
	background:rgba(255,255,255,0); /* But! Let's make the background fully transparent where we can, we don't actually want to see it if we can help it... */
	list-style:none;
	position:absolute;
	left:-9999px; /* Hide off-screen when not needed (this is more accessible than display:none;) */
}
#nav ul li{
	padding-top:1px; /* Introducing a padding between the li and the a give the illusion spaced items */
	float:none;
}
#nav ul a{
	white-space:nowrap; /* Stop text wrapping and creating multi-line dropdown items */
}
#nav li:hover ul{ /* Display the dropdown on hover */
	left:0; /* Bring back on-screen when needed */
}
#nav li:hover a{ /* These create persistent hover states, meaning the top-most link stays 'hovered' even when your cursor has moved down the list. */
	background:#69C;
	text-decoration:underline;
}
#nav li:hover ul a{ /* The persistent hover state does however create a global style for links even before they're hovered. Here we undo these effects. */
	text-decoration:none;
}
#nav li:hover ul li a:hover{ /* Here we define the most explicit hover states--what happens when you hover each individual link. */
	background:#333;
}

You also need to include CSS Reset in your style, just in case you dont have it already.

/*--- RESET ---*/
body,div,dl,dt,dd,ul,ol,li,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,pre,form,fieldset,input,textarea,p,blockquote,th,td{
	margin:0;
	padding:0;
}
table{
	border-collapse:collapse;
	border-spacing:0;
}
fieldset,img{
	border:0;
}
address,caption,cite,code,dfn,th,var{
	font-style:normal;
	font-weight:normal;
}
caption,th{
	text-align:left;
}
h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6{
	font-size:100%;
	font-weight:normal;
}
q:before,q:after{
	content:'';
}
abbr,acronym{
	border:0;
}

Demo / Download

So, there you have it. A simple concept pulled off with some very lean markup and some clever CSS and progressive enhancement. It’s totally accessible, the markup is semantic and sensible and it relies on no weighty Javascript libraries to work.