How to Create a Pure CSS Dropdown Menu

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With the help of some advanced selectors a dropdown menu can be easily created with CSS. Throw in some fancy CSS3 properties and you

can create a design that was once only achievable with background images and Javascript. Follow this tutorial to see the step by step

process of building your own pure CSS dropdown menu.

(http://line25.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/css-menu/demo/index.html)

The menu well be creating features two sub categories that appear once the parent link is activated by a hover. The first series of sub-links

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appear underneath main nav bar, then the second series of links fly out horizontally from the first dropdown. Take a look at the CSS

dropdown menu demo to see it all in action.

View the pure CSS dropdown menu demo (http://line25.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/css-menu/demo/index.html)

Home

Tutorials

Articles

Inspiration

First up well need to create the HTML structure for our CSS menu. Well use HTML5 to house the navigation menu in a element,

then add the primary navigation links in a simple unordered list.

Home

Tutorials

Photoshop

The HTML Structure

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Illustrator

Web Design

Articles

Web Design

User Experience

Inspiration

The first sets of sub-menus can then be added under the Tutorials and Articles links, each one being a complete unordered list inserted

within the of its parent menu option.

Home

Tutorials

Photoshop

Illustrator

Web Design

HTML

CSS ul {

display: block;

}

Lets begin the CSS by getting the basic dropdown functionality working. With CSS specificity and advanced selectors we can target

individual elements buried deep in the HTML structure without the need for extra IDs or classes. First hide the sub menus by targeting

any ULs within a UL with the display:none; declaration. In order to make these menus reappear they need to be converted back to

block elements on hover of the LI. The > child selector makes sure only the child UL of the LI being hovered is targeted, rather than all

sub menus appearing at once.

The CSS Styling

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nav ul {

background: #efefef;

background: linear-gradient(top, #efefef 0%, #bbbbbb 100%);

background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #efefef 0%, #bbbbbb 100%);

background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #efefef 0%,#bbbbbb 100%)

box-shadow: 0px 0px 9px rgba(0,0,0,0.15);

padding: 0 20px;

border-radius: 10px;

list-style: none;

position: relative;

display: inline-table;

}

nav ul:after {

content: ""; clear: both; display: block;

}

We can then start to style up the main navigation menu with the help of CSS3 properties such as gradients, box shadows and border radius.

Adding position:relative; will allow us to absolutely position the sub menus according to this main nav bar, then

display:inline-table will condense the width of the menu to fit. The clearfix sty le rule will clear the floats used on the subsequent

list items without the use of overflow:hidden , which would hide the sub menus and prevent them from appearing.

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nav ul li {

float: left;

}

nav ul li:hover {

background: #4b545f;

background: linear-gradient(top, #4f5964 0%, #5f6975 40%)

background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #4f5964 0%, #5f697

background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #4f5964 0%,#5f6

}

nav ul li:hover a {

color: #fff;

}

nav ul li a {

display: block; padding: 25px 40px;

color: #757575; text-decoration: none;

}

The individual menu items are then styled up with CSS rules added to the and the nested anchor. In the browser this will make the

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link change to a blue gradient background and white text.

nav ul ul {

background: #5f6975; border-radius: 0px; padding: 0;

position: absolute; top: 100%;

}

nav ul ul li {

float: none;border-top: 1px solid #6b727c;

border-bottom: 1px solid #575f6a;

position: relative;

}

nav ul ul li a {

padding: 15px 40px;

color: #fff;

}

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Line25

nav ul ul li a:hover {

background: #4b545f;

}

The main navigation bar is now all styled up, but the sub menus still need some work. They are currently inheriting sty les from their

parent elements, so a change of background and the removal of the border-radius and padding fixes their appearance. To make sure they

fly out underneath the main menu they are positioned absolutely 100% from the top of the UL (ie, the bottom).

The LIs of each UL in the sub menu dont need floating side by side, instead theyre listed vertically with thin borders separating each one.

A quick hover effect then darkens the background to act as a visual cue.

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nav ul ul ul {

position: absolute; left: 100%; top:0;

}

The final step is to position the sub-sub-menus accordingly. These menus will be inheriting all the sub-menu styling already, so all they

need is to be positioned absolutely to the right (left:100%) of the relative position of the parent .

(http://line25.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/css-menu/demo/index.html)

The Completed Pure CSS Dropdown Menu

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Written by Chris Spooner

Chris Spooner(/about) is a designer who loves experimenting with new

web design techniques collating creative website designs. Check out

Chris' design tutorials and articles at Blog.SpoonGraphics

(http://blog.spoongraphics.co.uk) or follow his daily findings on Twitter

(http://twitter.com/chrisspooner) .

View the pure CSS dropdown menu demo (http://line25.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/css-menu/demo/index.html)

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shadows(/subscribe) .

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38 Comments

Justin

Where did you learn to create a pure CSS drop down menu.

Bob Rockefeller

Have you updated this to handle the responsive design issues with devices not having a :hover ability?

ren

Love :-) Simple, straightforward, and well-explained. And I really appreciate that you included the styling to make it pretty, not just functional.

Thanks!

ust

nice...

thx and god bless you and the world...

a sincere blessing from hong kong..

^___^

walif

It was so amazing post and awesome collection so that i share it my cousin and FB,Twitter friends.Great writer.Care on and write good

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content more beautiful pics.

web design south wales

Good tutorial but does have some IE issues although who doesn&apost have issues with IE?

enny

very well written tutorial. that is how a tutorial should be. HOwever, i see the demo, the sizes of the button and navbar are pretty big.

Ofcourse i can tweak it.

good work

thanks

kuldeepdaftary

It dosent work in ie9 > Which is really sad! I think post title is misleading . it must be

How To Create a Pure "CSS3" Dropdown Menu.

nice code otherwise.

abhinav singh

it&aposs cool tutorial....loved it :)

Mark Narusson

Great tutorial. Looks nice and clean - love it dude.

Sohail Gul

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Awesome tutorial Thank you Chris!!! !

Jon

Awesome tutorial, that&aposs a beautiful menu!

ebdesign Lover

Hey Chris, this is really great tutorial for creating a pure css dropdown menu. As I love to design, I always prefer to use CSS for style because

CSS is really much smoother than option.

Arran

Great post, the more we can step away from heavy technologies and utilise elegant CSS the better.

web design springfield mo

Pretty cool stuff. We&aposve been so frustrated by dropdown menus that we&aposve started moving away from them, keeping the most

important pages in the main navigation menu while relegating less important pages to footer menus. We&aposll give this a try. I&aposm

optimistic that it while make dropdown menus less frustrating. Thanks for the tip!

jpoblam

In the course of learning responsive design, I was inspired by a new idea. It is, the idea that the entire site need not be linked from each menu

(often eliminating the need for a drop-down). Keeping links within context, with a link-back to upper levels makes the site more usable, too.

Thus, in your example, selection of "Tutorials" might lead to a page on which the most important (e.g. "Photoshop") is featured with an across-

the-top including "Home", "Illustrator", and "Web Design".

itoctopus

A drop down menu in CSS is much smoother that one written in JavaScript - and it won&apost get affected at all if the person chooses to

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disable JS on his browser (it&aposll still work).

Thanks for sharing!

Osho Garg

Hello Chris Thank You Very Much For Sharing This :)

I Am Going To Install This Widget On My Blog. This DropMenu Really Rocks With Javascript :)

canciller

thank you, thank you, thank you...

nice tut.

Steve I&aposve seen this technique used in a few WordPress themes; it looks great! The Internet Explorer compatibility issue makes me hesitant to

use this sort of thing on my main site, though.

I&aposm also wondering, does an advanced search engine crawler like Google&aposs consider this masking or something else that could

reduce the quality of the site as far as the crawler is concerned?

Brighton Electrician

Cracking tutorial! I think I&aposll have to use some of these techniques on my own website.

I designed my website using HTML and CSS only so this will work really well I&aposm sure!

Thanks Chris :)

Carlos Campos

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or s n :

http://necolas.github.com/norm...

Simon Duck

Thanks for the tutorial. I&aposve recently started a new project and making the mock-up and as I didn&apost want to produce a full blown

thing, just HTML and CSS, I really needed a decent article to follow.

Regards,

Simon Duck

Envira

Thats cute and awesome.

I love it,will use in future projects :)

Seham Syed

The > child selector makes sure only the child UL of the LI being hovered is targeted, rather than all sub menus appearing at once.

FvG

Can anyone tell me what the > means for css? nav ul li:hover > ul

Idraki

The immediate child element the selector met. In this case, the first ul after the hovered li.

Jon Ewing

Not true, Beata - this menu works in IE9+ but not in IE8 and earlier.

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However, I do think one thing is missing aside from the accessibility (which I agree, Greg, is a real and important consideration) - I think

it&aposs important to have a graphical element that indicates the difference between a menu item with a drop-down or fly-out and one without.

Something like an arrow or triangle to indicate that there is hidden content.

But that&aposs not a criticism of the tutorial. Such niceties are really for the individual designer to add. And this is a very clear and well-written

tutorial.

Garry Conn

You know, drop down menus have always been a challenge for me. For starters, there&aposs so many other sites that provide tutorials on

them, but they&aposre really hard to follow or don&apost provide enough details to get me thru the snags. This has to be probably one of the

best drop down menu tutorials I have read. Plus the design craftsmanship behind it is amazing. Thanks for posting this Chris. It will totally be a

tutorial I will find myself coming back to often.

Beata

It&aposs a pity it is not working with IE.

Alex

it&aposs a pity that IE sucks.

:-)

Greg Tarnoff

This isn&apost very accessible for keyboard navigation. While the top level is focusable, no flyouts happen or even focus on those elements

when hidden. I tried adding a :focus to the hover events and that still doesn&apost work. 1 in 5 people struggle to use the web. Using a menu

like this doesn&apost help them.

Fernanda

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p

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ere s e own oa s o arquves

Andrei

Does it work in IE7, IE8?

Jason Nope. As is the case with nearly every CSS3 element, you&aposll need another solution for IE.

smashinghub

amazing and easy dropdown menu tutorial

thanks

Dima Taras

great tutorial!!!

will start using dropdown lists from now)

eb design Maidenhead

Useful technique, am thinking about using it on future projects.

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