3D Tabs with CSS2

The Conclusion

Now there are two important things I feel I must mention. The first is that this has only been tested in Internet Explorer (I know, slap my wrists). It may need a little tweaking of the CSS to get it to display perfectly in Mozilla or Opera. Feel free to post any findings you make in this regard.

You've also probably noted that by doing things this way -- creating one image for the bottom, middle, and top –- we are limiting ourselves to the width of the image. This doesn't work well if you have more tabs than can fit in that width, or just lot's of lateral content. For these situations, you'd want to slice it up even more, and created an expandable center area, and image slices for all corners and edges that can adjust accordingly.

Other than that, you should be able to make great use of (and extend) this structure in your web application. Feel free to suggest any improvements that you've made!

All the code:

<style>

#everything {
  padding: 0px;
  margin: 4px;
  height: 100%;
  min-height: 800px;
  width: 900px;
}

#navTabs {
  padding: 0px 0px 0px 15px;
  margin: 0px;
  width: 100%;
  background: url("top.png") no-repeat top;
  height: 45px;
  vertical-align: top;
}

.tabon, .taboff {
  height: 45px;
  cursor: pointer;
  cursor: hand;
  display: inline;
  overflow: hidden;
  vertical-align: top;
}

.tabOn {
  background-image: url("on_m.png");
  font-weight: bold;
}

.taboff {
  background-image: url("off_m.png");
  color: #666666;
}

.tabItem {
  vertical-align:top;
  height: 45px;
  display:inline;
  font-size: 11px;
  margin: 10px 0px 0px 0px;
}

#actionPanel {
  width: 100%;
  height: 70%;
  padding: 10px;
  background: url("mid.png");
}

#btm {
  height: 16px;
  background: url("bottom.png");
}
</style>

<%
dim arTabs( 5 )
arTabs( 0 ) = "home"
arTabs( 1 ) = "events"
arTabs( 2 ) = "news"
arTabs( 3 ) = "photos"
arTabs( 4 ) = "users"
arTabs( 5 ) = "admin"
%>

<div id="everything">
<div id="navTabs">

<%
dim theClass, thisPage

thisPage = Request.ServerVariables("SCRIPT_NAME")
thisPage = replace( right( thisPage, len( thisPage ) - inStrRev( thisPage, "/" ) ), ".asp", "" )

for i = 0 to uBound( arTabs)
if thisPage = arTabs(i) or left( thisPage, len( arTabs(i) ) ) = arTabs(i)
  then
    theClass = "on"
  else
    theClass = "off"
end if

response.Write("<div class=""tab" & theClass & """ onclick=""javascript:window.location='" & arTabs(i) & ".asp'"">")

Response.Write("<img src=""" & theClass & "_l.png"" />")

Response.Write("<div class=""tabItem""><img src=""" & arTabs(i) & ".gif"" align=""absmiddle"" />&nbsp;")

Response.Write( replace( arTabs(i), "_", " " ) & "</div>" )

Response.Write("<img src=""" & theClass & "_r.png"" /></div>" & vbCrLf)

next
%>

</div>