Using CSS backgrounds to create a navigation bar

1. Edit the body element. Like in the previous exercise, edit the body start tag, adding
the id value shown.
<body id="homePage">

2. Style the structural divs. This page’s structure is simple, as are the CSS rules
required to style it. The #wrapper rule sets a fixed width (which is four times the
width of one of the tabs) and centers the design in the browser window. The
#masthead rule adds some padding at the top of the masthead, so the tabs won’t
hug the top of the browser window.
The #navContainer rule has a bottom border (to firmly separate the navigation
from the other page content) and a defined height, which is the height of a tab.
The height setting is useful, because these tabs will be floated, meaning they’re
outside of the standard document flow. By giving the container a fixed height, the
border is shown in the right place; without the height definition, the border would
be displayed at the top of the navContainer div, because as far as browsers are
concerned, floated elements technically don’t take up any height within the standard
document flow.
Finally, the #content rule gives that area a background color and some padding.
#wrapper {
width: 740px;
margin: 0 auto;
}
#masthead {
padding-top: 20px;
}
#navContainer {
height: 30px;
border-bottom: 5px solid #ad3514;
}
#content {
padding: 10px;
background-color: #eeeeee;
}

3. Style list items. Items within the list are styled to float left. The background value
includes the location of the rollover image, with additional settings being
no-repeat (to stop it from tiling), and then 0 and 0, to ensure the relevant portion
of the rollover image is seen by default. The width and height values are the same
as that of the image: 185px and 30px, respectively.
#navigation li {
float: left;
background: url(css-tab-rollover-image.gif) no-repeat 0 0;
width: 185px;
height: 30px;
}

4. Next, style the links. The text is rendered in white, uppercase, and in Arial, and the
default underlines are removed. Setting display to block makes the entire link
container into an active link, thereby making the navigation bar work in the traditional
manner (rather than just the text being active). Finally, the padding settings
position the text correctly over the background images. The height setting, combined
with the padding top setting of 9px, adds up to the height of the container—
30px. Without this, the space underneath the text would not be active.
#navigation a:link, #navigation a:visited {
font: bold 1.1em Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
text-transform: uppercase;
color: #ffffff;
text-decoration: none;
display: block;
height: 21px;
padding: 9px 0px 0px 30px;
}

5. Style other link states. For the hover and active states, you define which portion
of the rollover graphic is supposed to be visible. This is done via background position
values. The first of these remains 0, because you always want to see the image
from its far left. The vertical reading depends on where the relevant portion of the
image appears in the rollover graphic.
If you check css-tab-rollover-image.gif in an image editor, you’ll see the hover
state graphic is 40 pixels from the top and the active state graphic is 80 pixels
from the top. This means the image needs to be vertically moved –40 pixels and
–80 pixels for the hover and active states, respectively. Therefore, the rules for
these states are as follows:
#navigation a:hover {
background: url(css-tab-rollover-image.gif) 0 -40px;
}
#navigation a:active {
background: url(css-tab-rollover-image.gif) 0 -80px;
}

6. Define the active section state. As per step 8 of the previous exercise, the active
state graphic can be set. In this case, this is done by displaying the fourth state in
the rollover image via the following rule:
#homePage #homePageLink a:link, #homePage #homePageLink a:visited,
å #servicesPage #servicesPageLink a:link, #servicesPage
å #servicesPageLink a:visited, #customerSupportPage
å #customerSupportPageLink a:link, #customerSupportPage
å #customerSupportPageLink a:visited, #contactDetailsPage
å #contactDetailsPageLink a:link, #contactDetailsPage
å #contactDetailsPageLink a:visited {
background: url(css-tab-rollover-image.gif) 0 -120px;
}
Again, you can change the id value of the body element to one of the other list
item id values to change the active section link.

Creating a CSS-only tab bar that automates the active page

1. Edit the body element—in the HTML page, edit the body start tag, adding the class
value shown. Its significance will be explained later.
<body id="homePage">

2. Edit the body rule. In the CSS document, amend the body rule as shown to add a
light gray background:
body {
font: 62.5%/1.5 Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
background: #dddddd;
}

3. Style structural divs. Add the following #wrapper rule, which defines a set width for
the page, centers it, and sets the background color to white.
#wrapper {
width: 700px;
margin: 0 auto;
background: #ffffff;
}
Next, style the content div by adding the following rule, which adds a border to all
edges but the top one, and defines internal padding:
#content {
padding: 15px 15px 0;
border-right: 1px solid #898989;
border-bottom: 1px solid #898989;
border-left: 1px solid #898989;
}
These rules work slightly differently from those in the previous exercise. We want
the content borders to start right under the navigation, hence the padding
being applied to the top of the content div, rather than a margin below the
navContainer div.

4. Style the navContainer div. Add the following rule to style the navContainer div.
The font settings define a size and family. Avoid setting a line-height value,
because that makes it much harder to line up the tabs with the borders later. The
padding value applies some padding above the soon-to-be-created tabs, and the
border-bottom value finally surrounds all edges of the content div with a border.
Because the wrapper div has a white background, this currently shows through the
navContainer div, and so a background setting is applied, using the same background
color value as applied to the body element.
#navContainer {
font: 1.1em Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
text-align: center;
padding: 20px 0 0;
border-bottom: 1px solid #909090;
background: #dddddd;
}

5. Style the list. Add the following rule to style the list. The bottom padding value
(5px here) adds padding to the bottom of the list, and needs to be equivalent to
the padding value you want to be under the text in each tab.
#navigation ul {
padding: 0 0 5px;
}
Next, style the list items to make them display inline.
#navigation li {
display: inline;
}

6. Add the following rule to style the links. Most of the property values should be
familiar by now. Note how the border value applies a border to each link; this, in
tandem with the background value, gives all the links the appearance of background
tabs. The padding setting provides space around the link contents (and
note how the vertical padding value is the same as the bottom padding value in
step 5), and the margin-right setting adds some space between each tab.
#navigation a:link, #navigation a:visited {
text-transform: uppercase;
text-decoration: none;
color: #000000;
background: #bbbbbb;
border: 1px solid #898989;
padding: 5px 10px;
position: relative;
margin-right: 5px;
}
As per the previous exercise, the unwanted right-hand value for the rightmost tab
(in this case, the margin-right setting) can be overridden by using a contextual
selector that takes advantage of the id values defined in the HTML document’s
unordered list items.
#navigation #contactDetailsPageLink a:link, #navigation
å #contactDetailsPageLink a:visited {
margin-right: 0;
}

7. Style other link states. Add the following two rules to define the other link states.
The first makes the text slightly lighter when a link has been visited. The second
brings back the default underline on the hover state, along with making the link’s
background slightly lighter.
#navigation a:visited {
color: #222222;
}
#navigation a:hover {
text-decoration: underline;
background: #cccccc;
}

8. Create page-specific overrides. Remember back in step 1, when you defined an id
value for the body element? This can now be used to automate the active tab via
the following rule:
#homePage #homePageLink a:link, #homePage #homePageLink a:visited,
å #servicesPage #servicesPageLink a:link, #servicesPage
å #servicesPageLink a:visited, #customerSupportPage
å #customerSupportPageLink a:link, #customerSupportPage
å #customerSupportPageLink a:visited, #contactDetailsPage
å #contactDetailsPageLink a:link, #contactDetailsPage
å #contactDetailsPageLink a:visited {
background: #ffffff;
border-bottom-color: #ffffff;
}
The declaration is simple: a white background is applied and the bottom border
color is changed to white. The grouped selector is more complex, so I’ll start by
explaining the first contextual selector, which is #homePage #homePageLink a:link.
What this means is, “Apply the declaration to the link within an element with an id
of homePageLink that’s in an element with an id of homePage.” In the page you’ve
been working on, the body element has an id of homePage, and the first list element
in the unordered list has an id of homePageLink. Therefore, the link within this list
item is automatically given the style, making it look like the active tab (since the
background blends directly into the content area).
The other selectors in the grouped selector behave in the same way (in each case
for the link and visited styles); so if, for example, you change the id value of the
body start tag in the HTML document to customerSupportPage and then refresh
the web page, you’ll see the third link become the active tab.

Creating a simple horizontal navigation bar in CSS

1. Examine the web page. The web page for this exercise—graphical-navigation.
html—is designed for flexibility when it comes to styling elements on the page,
making it easy to change elements without touching the markup (this page is used
with a few modifications in subsequent exercises, too).
The page’s contents are placed within a wrapper div, within which are the masthead
and content divs. The latter contains some paragraphs, and the former
includes a navContainer div, which houses a navigation div, which in turn houses
the unordered list shown in the following code block. (This nesting of divs isn’t
required for all sites—often you can get away with a single div around the navigation
list—or, indeed, none at all, applying the id value of navigation to the list
itself; however, having an additional wrapper or two is often useful for more complex
layouts.)
The list is an unordered list. The main difference to previous lists is the inclusion of
an id value for each list item. For horizontal lists, especially those that will be highly
styled, this is worth doing, because it enables you to work all manner of CSS trickery
later on, which can benefit the web page. (In fact, some of the techniques can
be applied to vertical lists, too.)
<ul>
<li id="homePageLink"><a href="#">Home page</a></li>
<li id="servicesPageLink"><a href="#">Services</a></li>

<li id="customerSupportPageLink"><a href="#">Customer support</a>
å</li>
<li id="contactDetailsPageLink"><a href="#">Contact details</a></li>
</ul>

2. Edit the body and p rules. This design is going to have a classic feel, so in the CSS
file, edit the body rule to amend the font set, add a light gray background, and
amend the p rule to change the font size.
body {
font: 62.5%/1.5 Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
background: #dddddd;
}
p {
font-size: 1.3em;
margin-bottom: 1em;
}

3. Style the structural divs. First, add a rule to style the wrapper div, as shown in the
following code block. This sets a fixed width for the div, centers it horizontally, and
applies borders on all edges except the top one. The background value provides a
white background for the page’s content. (Note that there’s plenty of explanation
about page layout in Chapter 7.) For the content area, add some horizontal
padding by adding the #content rule shown in the following code block.
#wrapper {
width: 700px;
margin: 0 auto;
border-right: 1px solid #898989;
border-bottom: 1px solid #898989;
border-left: 1px solid #898989;
background: #ffffff;
}
#content {
padding: 0 15px;
}

4. Style the navigation container by adding the following rule to style the
navContainer div. In this rule, the font style for the navigation bar’s links is set,
and the text-align value centers the content horizontally. The padding value
applies some padding at the top and bottom of the navContainer div, ensuring
its content doesn’t hug its edges—in design, the space is often as important as the
content, so don’t cram things in.
#navContainer {
font: 1.1em/1 Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
background: #d7d7d7;
text-align: center;
padding: 7px 0px;
border-top: 1px solid #898989;
border-bottom: 1px solid #898989;
margin-bottom: 10px;
}

5. Style the list items. Now that the structure’s styled, it’s time to get cracking on the
list. First, add a rule to remove the default bullets from the unordered list within
the navigation div.
#navigation ul {
list-style: none;
}
Next, set the list items to display inline, as with the breadcrumbs. Add some horizontal
padding, and also, as shown, add a border to each item’s right-hand edge,
which will act as a visual separator, making each link more distinct.
#navigation li {
display: inline;
padding: 0px 9px;
border-right: 1px solid #aaaaaa;
}
If you test the page at this point, you’ll see that all the links have a right-edge border—
not a terrible crime—but from a design standpoint, the one at the far right
shouldn’t have one (after all, separators are only needed between pairs of links).
Luckily, because of the id values applied to the list items earlier, each one can be
individually styled, which also means an override can be applied to a specific link.
In this case, add the following rule, which removes the border from the list item
with an id value of contactDetailsPageLink:
#navigation #contactDetailsPageLink {
border-right: none;
}

6. The last thing to do is style the links. The following rules set the link text to uppercase,
removing the default underline and coloring them black by default. The links
are then gray on the visited state, have an underline on the hover state, and are
red on the active state.
#navigation a:link, #navigation a:visited {
text-transform: uppercase;
text-decoration: none;
}
#navigation a:link {
color: #000000;
}
#navigation a:visited {}
#navigation a:hover {
text-decoration: underline;
}
#navigation a:active {
color: #ff0000;
}

**NOTE :In this example, the color of the navigation links—which have no underline—is the
same as the body copy. While this would be a very bad idea for inline links, it’s fine for
the navigation links, because they’re obviously distinct from the text elsewhere on the
page, due to the background color and horizontal line that separates the navigation
area from the content area.

Creating a vertical navigation bar with collapsible sections

1. Set up the JavaScript. Create a new JavaScript document and attach it to the HTML
file via a script element in the head of the document. (In the example files, this
document has been named vertical-navigation-bar.js.) First, add the
JavaScript lines first shown in the “Enhancing accessibility for collapsible content”
section:
var cssNode = document.createElement('link');
cssNode.setAttribute('rel', 'stylesheet');
cssNode.setAttribute('type', 'text/css');
cssNode.setAttribute('href', 'javascript-overrides.css');
document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(cssNode);
Next, add the toggler script shown in the “Modularizing the collapsible content
script” section, but amend the target element as shown:
function toggle(toggler) {
if(document.getElementById) {
targetElement = toggler.nextSibling;

if(targetElement.className == undefined) {
targetElement = toggler.nextSibling.nextSibling;
}
if (targetElement.style.display == "block")
{
targetElement.style.display = "none";
}
else
{
targetElement.style.display = "block";
}
}
}

2. Amend the list. To each top-level navigation link, add the onclick attribute, as
shown following. And to each second-level list that you initially want to be invisible,
add the class attribute shown. For any list you want to be visible, instead add
style="display: block;".
<li>
<a href="#" onclick="toggle(this); return false;">Section one</a>
<ul class="collapsibleList">
<li><a href="#">A link to a page</a></li>
<li><a href="#">A link to a page</a></li>
<li><a href="#">A link to a page</a></li>
<li><a href="#">A link to a page</a></li>
</ul>
</li>

3. Add a style sheet. Create and save the style sheet document javascriptoverrides.
css, and add the following rule to initially hide any lists with the
collapsibleList class value in JavaScript-enabled browsers.
#navigation ul.collapsibleList {
display: none;
}
The following images show the results (which depict, from left to right, the
default, hover, and active states).

Using HTML lists and CSS to create a button-like vertical navigation bar

1. Create the list structure. Add the following code block to create the structure of
the navigation bar. By using nested lists, you can provide the navigation bar with a
hierarchical structure (and you can style each level in CSS). In this example, the list
has two levels. (Refer to Chapter 3 for an overview of correctly formatting lists.)
This list is nested within a div with an id value of navigation, which we’ll later take
advantage of by using contextual selectors. (For this example, dummy href values
of # are being used, but in a live site, always check that your links lead somewhere!)
<div id="navigation">
<ul>
<li>
<a href="#">Section one</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#">A link to a page</a></li>
<li><a href="#">A link to a page</a></li>
<li><a href="#">A link to a page</a></li>
<li><a href="#">A link to a page</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<a href="#">Section two</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#">A link to a page</a></li>
<li><a href="#">A link to a page</a></li>
<li><a href="#">A link to a page</a></li>
<li><a href="#">A link to a page</a></li>
</ul>
</li>

<li>
<a href="#">Section three</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#">A link to a page</a></li>
<li><a href="#">A link to a page</a></li>
<li><a href="#">A link to a page</a></li>
<li><a href="#">A link to a page</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</div>

2. Add some padding to the body element, so page content doesn’t hug the browser
window edges. Also, add the background-color pair shown following:
body {
font: 62.5%/1.5 Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
padding: 20px;
background-color: #aaaaaa;
}

3. Style the list. Add the following rule to remove the
default bullet points from unordered lists within the navigation
div, define a width for the lists, and also set the
default font style.
#navigation ul {
list-style-type: none;
width: 140px;
font: 1.2em/1 Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}

4. Set an override for nested lists. As you can see from the
previous image, the nested links have much larger text.
This is because font sizes in ems are inherited, and therefore
the font size within the nested lists ends up at
1.2ems multiplied by 1.2ems. By adding the following
rule, the font size of nested lists is reset to 1em, making
nested lists look the same as top-level lists.
#navigation ul ul {
font-size: 1em;
}

5. Style the buttons. Use a contextual selector to style links within the navigation div
(i.e., the links within this list). These styles initially affect the entire list, but you’ll
later override them for level-two links. Therefore, the styles you’re working on now
are intended only for level-one links (which are for sections or categories). This
first set of property/value pairs turns off the default link underline, sets the list
items to uppercase, and defines the font weight as bold.

#navigation a:link, #navigation a:visited {
text-decoration: none;
text-transform: uppercase;
font-weight: bold;
}

6. Set button display and padding. Still within the same rule, set the buttons to
display as block, thereby making the entire container an active link (rather than
just the link text). Add some padding so the links don’t hug the edge of the
container.
#navigation a:link, #navigation a:visited {
text-decoration: none;
text-transform: uppercase;
font-weight: bold;
display: block;
padding: 3px 12px 3px 8px;
}

7. Define colors and borders. Define the button background and foreground colors,
setting the former to gray and the latter to white. Then add borders to create a 3D
effect. Borders can be styled individually. By setting the left and top borders to a
lighter shade than the background, and the right and bottom borders to a darker
shade, a 3D effect is achieved. (Don’t use black and white, because it will make the
result is too harsh.)
#navigation a:link, #navigation a:visited {
text-decoration: none;
text-transform: uppercase;
font-weight: bold;
display: block;
padding: 3px 12px 3px 8px;
background-color: #666666;
color: #ffffff;
border-top: 1px solid #dddddd;
border-right: 1px solid #333333;
border-bottom: 1px solid #333333;
border-left: 1px solid #dddddd;
}

8. Define other link states. The hover state is defined by
just changing the background color, making it slightly
lighter.
#navigation a:hover {
background-color: #777777;
}
The active state enables you to build on the 3D
effect: the padding settings are changed to move the text up and left by 1 pixel, the
background and foreground colors are made slightly darker, and the border colors
are reversed.

#navigation a:active {
padding: 2px 13px 4px 7px;
background-color: #444444;
color: #eeeeee;
border-top: 1px solid #333333;
border-right: 1px solid #dddddd;
border-bottom: 1px solid #dddddd;
border-left: 1px solid #333333;
}

9. Style nested list item links. The selector #navigation li li a enables you to style
links within a list item that are themselves within a list item (which happen to be in
the navigation div). In other words, you can create a declaration for level-two links.
These need to be differentiated from the section links, hence the following rule
setting them to lowercase and normal font weight (instead of bold). The padding
settings indent these links more than the section links, and the background and
foreground colors are different, being very dark gray (almost black) on light gray
rather than white on a darker gray.
#navigation li li a:link, #navigation li li a:visited {
text-decoration: none;
text-transform: lowercase;
font-weight: normal;
padding: 3px 3px 3px 17px;
background-color: #999999;
color: #111111;
}

10. Style nested item hover and active states. This is done in the same way as per the
section links, changing colors as appropriate and again reversing the border colors
on the active state.
#navigation li li a:hover {
background-color: #aaaaaa;
}
#navigation li li a:active {
padding: 2px 4px 4px 16px;
background-color: #888888;
color: #000000;
border-top: 1px solid #333333;
border-right: 1px solid #dddddd;
border-bottom: 1px solid #dddddd;
border-left: 1px solid #333333;
}
The navigation bar is now complete and, as you can see from the following images
(which depict, from left to right, the default, hover, and active states), the buttons
have a tactile feel to them. Should this not be to your liking, it’s easy to
change the look of the navigation bar because everything’s styled in CSS. To expand
on this design, you could introduce background images for each state, thereby
making the navigation bar even more graphical. However, because you didn’t

simply chop up a GIF, you can easily add and remove items from the navigation bar,
just by amending the list created in step 1. Any added items will be styled automatically
by the style sheet rules.