Creating a Drop-Down Menu with the Hover CSS Pseudoclass
In this penultimate part of a four-part series, you will learn how to use the "hover" CSS pseudo-class to build a fully-functional, CSS-based drop-down menu. The process is fairly straightforward, so you shouldn’t have trouble using this technique when developing navigation bars for your own websites.
Creating a Drop-Down Menu with the Hover CSS Pseudoclass - Developing a drop-down menu (Page 3 of 4 )
To demonstrate how the clever use of "hover" CSS pseudo-classes can help when building a drop-down menu, I'm going to create an XHTML document that will contain the menu's basic structure. In this case, the skeleton of the menu will be comprised of a few nested unordered lists, and will look like this:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<title>Drop down menu using :hover CSS pseudo class</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="wrapper">
<div id="header">
<h1>Drop down menu using :hover CSS pseudo class</h1>
<ul id="navbar">
<li><a href="#">Home</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#">Menu item 1</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Menu item 2</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Menu item 3</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Menu item 4</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Menu item 5</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#">About Us</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#">Menu item 1</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Menu item 2</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Menu item 3</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Menu item 4</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Menu item 5</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#">Products</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#">Menu item 1</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Menu item 2</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Menu item 3</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Menu item 4</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Menu item 5</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div id="content">
<h2>Main content section</h2>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse auctor commodo risus, et ultrices sapien vestibulum non. Maecenas scelerisque quam a nulla mattis tincidunt. Etiam massa libero, pharetra vel laoreet et, ultrices non leo. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed posuere ullamcorper lacus et sollicitudin. Morbi ultrices condimentum lacus, sit amet venenatis purus bibendum sit amet. Quisque rhoncus sodales sapien ac blandit. Nam lacus urna, commodo eget tincidunt vitae, ullamcorper at nulla. Vivamus ac iaculis justo. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Aliquam erat volutpat. Sed quis elit erat, et ultricies diam. Phasellus non turpis malesuada erat ultrices tincidunt sed vitae magna. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Duis purus risus, lacinia at faucibus id, luctus nec diam. In nulla neque, consequat ac hendrerit ac, pulvinar eu dui. Aenean in arcu felis, non hendrerit est.</p>
</div>
<div id="footer">
<h2>Footer section</h2>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse auctor commodo risus, et ultrices sapien vestibulum non. Maecenas scelerisque quam a nulla mattis tincidunt. Etiam massa libero, pharetra vel laoreet et, ultrices non leo. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed posuere ullamcorper lacus et sollicitudin. Morbi ultrices condimentum lacus, sit amet venenatis purus bibendum sit amet. Quisque rhoncus sodales sapien ac blandit. Nam lacus urna, commodo eget tincidunt vitae, ullamcorper at nulla. Vivamus ac iaculis justo. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Aliquam erat volutpat. Sed quis elit erat, et ultricies diam. Phasellus non turpis malesuada erat ultrices tincidunt sed vitae magna. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Duis purus risus, lacinia at faucibus id, luctus nec diam. In nulla neque, consequat ac hendrerit ac, pulvinar eu dui. Aenean in arcu felis, non hendrerit est.</p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Definitely, the way that the previous menu has been constructed features nothing particularly special, as it uses some nested unordered lists for defining the "Home," "About US" and "Products" sections of a fictitious website. It's that simple.
While the menu at this point is entirely functional, the plan here is to make each of its branches dynamic, so they can be displayed each time the mouse is placed over the corresponding sections without displacing the content down the web page.
How will this be accomplished without using a pinch of JavaScript? The "hover" CSS pseudo-class is the right answer; it's possible to use it for adding the expected behavior to the menu by writing a few simple styles.
This styling process will be discussed in depth in the next section. Therefore, go ahead and read the lines to come.
Style Sheets 
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