Oct 29
Advanced CSS Menu
Last tutorial, I showed you how to design a watercolor effect menu in Photoshop. This tutorial I will show you how to slice up the menu design (step by step) and put them together with CSS. Most of you probably know how to code a horizontal or vertical CSS list menu. Now let’s take it to the next level — code an advanced (un-typical) list menu utilizing the CSS position property.
Overview
Here are the required graphics to assembe the menu (you can download from the zip).
1. Main background
Open the Photoshop file. Turn off the menu text Layer Group and save the main background as menu-bg.jpg.
2. Button graphics
Turn off the background Layer Group and leave only the menu text layers visible. Make a rectangle selection cover the "home" item, go to menu Edit > Copy Merged (Cmd + Shift + C).
Create a new file and take note of the file dimension (w x h), in my case the "home" graphic is 144 x 58px. Paste the "home" graphic in the new file. Go to menu Image > Canvas Size, adjust the image height x 2 (58 + 58 = 116px). Duplicate the home graphic layer and align it to the bottom. Erase the highlight strokes in the upper layer.
Here is how the hover effect will work. We will set the link button to 144 x 58px, when mouseover, we will shift the background image from top to bottom.
Repeat this step for the other buttons. You should have the follow graphics:
3. HTML source
When you are done with the graphics, let’s start coding. Start with an un-ordered list <ul>.
- note there is an id="menu" assigned to the
<ul>tag - an unique class name assigned to each link
<a> - an empty
<span>tag (the purpose of this is to make the mouseover effect)
<ul id="menu">
<li><a href="#" class="home">Home <span></span></a></li>
<li><a href="#" class="about">About <span></span></a></li>
<li><a href="#" class="rss">RSS <span></span></a></li>
</ul>
#menu
Reset the menu to no padding, no margin, and no list-style. Specify the width and height same dimension as the menu-bg.jpg. Then attach the menu background image. The key point to remember here is set the position property to relative.
#menu {
list-style: none;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
width: 774px;
height: 210px;
background: url(images/menu-bg.jpg) no-repeat;
position: relative;
}
#menu span
Specify the span element to display:none (so they will be invisible by default). Specify position:absolute, so we can place the mouseover GIF image on exact position.
#menu span {
display: none;
position: absolute;
}
#menu a
The key point here is the text-indent property. We specify the text-indent property with a negative value (-900%), so the text will be hidden.
#menu a {
display: block;
text-indent: -900%;
position: absolute;
outline: none;
}
#menu a:hover
When mouseover the link, we want to shift the background image from top to bottom.
#menu a:hover {
background-position: left bottom;
}
#menu a:hover span
When mouseover the link, we want the span element to display:block.
#menu a:hover span {
display: block;
}
#menu .home
Specify the width, height, and background image. Since we already specified all <a> element postition:absolute in previous step, now just say where the .home button should be by specifying the left and top property.
#menu .home {
width: 144px;
height: 58px;
background: url(images/home.gif) no-repeat;
left: 96px;
top: 73px;
}
#menu .home span
Here we are specifying the width, height, background, and position of the span element of .home (mouseover GIF image)
#menu .home span {
width: 86px;
height: 14px;
background: url(images/home-over.gif) no-repeat;
left: 28px;
top: -20px;
}
#menu .about
Copy the .home rules and rename them to .about. Now just change the width, height, background, left, and top property.
#menu .about {
width: 131px;
height: 51px;
background: url(images/about.gif) no-repeat;
left: 338px;
top: 97px;
}
#menu .about span {
width: 40px;
height: 12px;
background: url(images/about-over.gif) no-repeat;
left: 44px;
top: 54px;
}
#menu .rss
Repeat this step for .rss
#menu .rss {
width: 112px;
height: 47px;
background: url(images/rss.gif) no-repeat;
left: 588px;
top: 94px;
}
#menu .rss span {
width: 92px;
height: 20px;
background: url(images/rss-over.gif) no-repeat;
left: 26px;
top: -20px;
}
All in one:
#menu {
list-style: none;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
width: 774px;
height: 210px;
background: url(images/menu-bg.jpg) no-repeat;
position: relative;
}
#menu span {
display: none;
position: absolute;
}
#menu a {
display: block;
text-indent: -900%;
position: absolute;
outline: none;
}
#menu a:hover {
background-position: left bottom;
}
#menu a:hover span {
display: block;
}
#menu .home {
width: 144px;
height: 58px;
background: url(images/home.gif) no-repeat;
left: 96px;
top: 73px;
}
#menu .home span {
width: 86px;
height: 14px;
background: url(images/home-over.gif) no-repeat;
left: 28px;
top: -20px;
}
#menu .about {
width: 131px;
height: 51px;
background: url(images/about.gif) no-repeat;
left: 338px;
top: 97px;
}
#menu .about span {
width: 40px;
height: 12px;
background: url(images/about-over.gif) no-repeat;
left: 44px;
top: 54px;
}
#menu .rss {
width: 112px;
height: 47px;
background: url(images/rss.gif) no-repeat;
left: 588px;
top: 94px;
}
#menu .rss span {
width: 92px;
height: 20px;
background: url(images/rss-over.gif) no-repeat;
left: 26px;
top: -20px;
}
Done
That’s it. You can preview my CSS menu.
Note: there is an IE6 bug where the <span> hover effect doesn’t display properly. To fix that, you can use Javascript to specify the <span> to display block on mouseover.
Design Watercolor Effect Menu Review: PayPal Redesign
Comments
Pages: 37 36 35 34 33 32 31 30 29 28 27 … 1 » Show All
There are 364 comments (+Add)
Pages: 37 36 35 34 33 32 31 30 29 28 27 … 1 » Show All
Post Your Comments
Loading ...
364 Edy Pang
July 1st, 2009 at 9:08 am
Thanks, It’s really nice tut
363 facundo
June 27th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Thank you for this tutorial, awesome website.
362 day
June 24th, 2009 at 11:59 am
thank you for this article! it really helped me in doing my project! hope you continue to post more techniques regarding css:) Godbless!
361 bryanregencia.com - freelance designer http://www.bryanregencia.com
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:54 pm
very useful for designers, thanks for sharing.
360 AdWords Optimierung http://www.web-netz.de/
June 18th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
This is AWESOME. I have been looking for this Tutorial for a very long time.
359 Robin
June 17th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
btw my email is splasher@live.se
358 Robin
June 17th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Hello, great menu, I can’t get this to work
If anyone is intrested in helping me, please send me an email.
My problem is: I can only see the three links in Home About Rss
And then: #menu { list-style: none; padding: 0; margin: 0; width: 774px; height: 210px; background…
This is just a very small part of whats failed.
Please help me and tell what I am doing wrong.
357 epc london http://www.homecert-direct.com
June 17th, 2009 at 5:30 am
this tutorial is perfect
356 burlesque performer http://www.avamayhemme.co.uk
June 17th, 2009 at 5:25 am
Top Post!.. wonderful tips there.. love the whole site!
355 siymat http://cyber-biology.blogspot.com
June 15th, 2009 at 8:36 am
thank….i really need it….