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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.

The menu we’ll be creating features two sub categories that appear once the parent link

is activated by a hover. The first series of sub-links 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.Enter your email address

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<nav> <ul> <li><a href="#">Home</a></li> <li><a href="#">Tutorials</a></li> <li><a href="#">Articles</a></li> <li><a href="#">Inspiration</a></li> </ul></nav>

First up we’ll need to create the HTML structure for our CSS menu. We’ll use HTML5 to

house the navigation menu in a <nav> element, then add the primary navigation links

in a simple unordered list.

<nav> <ul> <li><a href="#">Home</a></li> <li><a href="#">Tutorials</a> <ul> <li><a href="#">Photoshop</a></li> <li><a href="#">Illustrator</a></li> <li><a href="#">Web Design</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#">Articles</a> <ul> <li><a href="#">Web Design</a></li> <li><a href="#">User Experience</a></li> </ul> </li>

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The HTML Structure

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<li><a href="#">Inspiration</a></li> </ul></nav>

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 <li> of its parent menu

option.

<nav> <ul> <li><a href="#">Home</a></li> <li><a href="#">Tutorials</a> <ul> <li><a href="#">Photoshop</a></li> <li><a href="#">Illustrator</a></li> <li><a href="#">Web Design</a> <ul> <li><a href="#">HTML</a></li> <li><a href="#">CSS</a></li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#">Articles</a> <ul> <li><a href="#">Web Design</a></li> <li><a href="#">User Experience</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#">Inspiration</a></li> </ul></nav>

The secondary sub-menu is nested under the “Web Design” option of the first sub-

menu. These links are placed into another unordered list and inserted into the “Web

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Design” <li> .

So far this leaves us with a neat layout of links with the sub-menus having a clear

relation to their parents.

nav ul ul { display: none;}

nav ul li:hover > ul { display: block; }

The CSS Styling

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Let’s 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 UL’s 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.

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; }

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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 style 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.

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%, #5f6975 40%); background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #4f5964 0%,#5f6975 40%); } nav ul li:hover a { color: #fff;

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} 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 <li> and

the nested anchor. In the browser this will make the 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;

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border-bottom: 1px solid #575f6a; position: relative; } nav ul ul li a { padding: 15px 40px; color: #fff; } 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 styles 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 LI’s of each UL in the sub menu don’t need floating side by side, instead they’re

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 <li> .

The Completed Pure CSS Dropdown Menu

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Written by Chris Spooner

Chris Spooner 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 or follow his daily

findings on Twitter.

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August 13, 2012 at 11:07 am

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

August 13, 2012 at 11:56 am

great tutorial!!!

will start using dropdown lists from now)

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35 Comments

Web design Maidenhead

AucT

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August 13, 2012 at 12:22 pm

amazing and easy dropdown menu tutorial

thanks

August 13, 2012 at 12:23 pm

August 13, 2012 at 1:59 pm

Nope. As is the case with nearly every CSS3 element, you'll need

another solution for IE.

Does it work in IE7, IE8?

August 13, 2012 at 12:52 pm

Where is the downloads of arquives?

smashinghub

Andrei

Jason

Fernanda

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August 13, 2012 at 3:01 pm

This isn't 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't work. 1 in 5 people struggle to use the web.

Using a menu like this doesn't help them.

August 13, 2012 at 3:07 pm

August 13, 2012 at 9:02 pm

it's a pity that IE sucks.

:-)

It's a pity it is not working with IE.

Greg Tarnoff

Beata

Alex

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August 13, 2012 at 5:38 pm

You know, drop down menus have always been a challenge for

me. For starters, there's so many other sites that provide tutorials

on them, but they're really hard to follow or don't 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.

August 13, 2012 at 5:45 pm

Not true, Beata – this menu works in IE9+ but not in IE8 and

earlier.

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's 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's not a criticism of the tutorial. Such niceties are really for

the individual designer to add. And this is a very clear and well-

Garry Conn

Jon Ewing

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written tutorial.

August 13, 2012 at 6:36 pm

August 13, 2012 at 7:15 pm

The immediate child element the selector met. In this case, the first

ul after the hovered li.

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

August 13, 2012 at 7:15 pm

The > child selector makes sure only the child UL of the LI being

hovered is targeted, rather than all sub menus appearing at once.

August 13, 2012 at 8:02 pm

Thats cute and awesome.

FvG

Idraki

Seham Syed

Envira

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I love it,will use in future projects :)

August 13, 2012 at 8:17 pm

Thanks for the tutorial. I've recently started a new project and

making the mock-up and as I didn't want to produce a full blown

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

follow.

Regards,

Simon Duck

August 13, 2012 at 10:02 pm

Works in IE :)

http://necolas.github.com/normalize.css/

Simon Duck

Carlos Campos

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August 13, 2012 at 10:36 pm

Cracking tutorial! I think I'll 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'm sure!

Thanks Chris :)

August 14, 2012 at 6:29 am

I've 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'm also wondering, does an advanced search engine crawler like

Google's consider this masking or something else that could

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

August 14, 2012 at 11:58 pm

Brighton Electrician

Steve

canciller

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thank you, thank you, thank you…

nice tut.

August 15, 2012 at 5:52 am

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 :)

August 15, 2012 at 9:20 am

A drop down menu in CSS is much smoother that one written in

JavaScript – and it won't get affected at all if the person chooses

to disable JS on his browser (it'll still work).

Thanks for sharing!

Osho Garg

itoctopus

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August 15, 2012 at 4:46 pm

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".

August 16, 2012 at 5:42 am

Pretty cool stuff. We've been so frustrated by dropdown menus that

we've started moving away from them, keeping the most important

pages in the main navigation menu while relegating less important

pages to footer menus. We'll give this a try. I'm optimistic that it

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

August 17, 2012 at 3:49 am

fjpoblam

web design springfield mo

Arran

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Great post, the more we can step away from heavy technologies

and utilise elegant CSS the better.

August 18, 2012 at 4:57 am

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.

August 18, 2012 at 10:37 pm

Awesome tutorial, that's a beautiful menu!

August 19, 2012 at 11:05 pm

Awesome tutorial Thank you Chris!!!!

Webdesign Lover

Jon

Sohail Gul

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August 20, 2012 at 11:40 am

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

August 21, 2012 at 4:44 pm

it's cool tutorial….loved it :)

August 21, 2012 at 6:01 pm

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.

August 23, 2012 at 10:57 pm

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.

Mark Narusson

abhinav singh

Kuldeep

jenny

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Ofcourse i can tweak it.

good work

thanks

August 24, 2012 at 9:54 pm

Good tutorial but does have some IE issues although who doesn't

have issues with IE?

August 25, 2012 at 5:01 am

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

August 27, 2012 at 4:37 am

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

web design south wales

Justin

walif

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good content more beautiful pics.

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