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
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There are 479 comments (+Add)
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479 yuanzhen
September 1st, 2010 at 12:47 am
cool idea! it is great
478 web tasarım fiyatları http://www.logobilisim.com/
August 22nd, 2010 at 4:59 am
Very nice indeed.. I love the whole freestyle feel to it. It doesn’t feel so, bland. Cool idea.
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August 21st, 2010 at 2:10 am
Hmmm, no doubt, really a nice tutorial. It will helpful for web designer. One great information is got from the bottom of this tutorial to fix IE6 bug using js. I spoiled a lot of time to solve css hover problem, but did not from none of where. Thanks for providing important article for us.
476 diden http://www.seniaku.com
August 9th, 2010 at 12:31 am
the most coolest and awesome website i ever found on the net!!!!! everything here is simple, clean and alot functional!!
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August 7th, 2010 at 6:59 am
This one is really awsome.
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August 7th, 2010 at 6:58 am
Thanks for sharing such useful information.
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July 28th, 2010 at 12:03 am
Cool tuorial. Thanks for Sharing
472 星星魔术博客 http://magic.uucuo.com
July 24th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
very good tutrial and so nice blog。
471 Amy http://amyopoly.com
July 23rd, 2010 at 11:33 am
Thank you so much for this tutorial. I’ve spruced up my site with a slightly more complicated version than the example on my site. Thanks so much for your help! I love this site.
470 cho http://melyanao06.student.ipb.ac.id
July 23rd, 2010 at 9:22 am
great article. Thanks for sharing.