Simple Dropdown Menu Using CSS

In this tutorial we will create a clean and minimal dropdown menu using pure CSS and HTML. It is possible to create a beautiful dropdown menu with some of the fancy properties of CSS. This will be a good example for those who are quite uncomfortable with the JavaScript coding. The complete code is highly customizable and easy to grasp.

HTML

So lets start with some html to create a base code for our menu. This the main navigation ul

<ul id="navigation">
<li>
<a href="index.html">Home</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="#">Portfolio</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="#">Services</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="#">Technology</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="#">About</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="#">Contact</a>
</li>
</ul>

After this we will be adding the sub-navigation list to some of the menu items of main navigation

<ul id="navigation">
    <li>
        <a href="index.html" class="main">Home</a>
    </li>
    <li>
        <a href="#" class="main">Portfolio</a>
        <div class="sub-nav-wrapper"><ul class="sub-nav">
            <li><a href="#">Graphics</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">Web</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">Print</a></li>
        </ul></div>
    </li>
    <li>
      <a href="#" class="main">Services</a>
        <div class="sub-nav-wrapper"><ul class="sub-nav">
            <li><a href="#">Web Design</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">SEO</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">Content Writing</a></li>
        </ul></div>
    </li>
    <li>
      <a href="#" class="main">Technology</a>
        <div class="sub-nav-wrapper"><ul class="sub-nav">
            <li><a href="#">JavaScript</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">HTML/CSS</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">Drupal</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">Joomla</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">Wordpress</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">MySQL</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">Oracle</a></li>
        </ul></div>
    </li>
    <li>
      <a href="#" class="main">About</a>
        <div class="sub-nav-wrapper"><ul class="sub-nav">
            <li><a href="#">Location</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">History</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">Jobs</a></li>
            <li><a href="#">Awards</a></li>
        </ul></div>
    </li>
    <li>
      <a href="#" class="main">Contact</a>
    </li>
</ul>

So, for sub-nav-wrapper will be the css class for sub-navigation div which will be visible on hover of it’s parent menu.

CSS

Now let’s add some styling to our dropdown menu and make it functional with CSS. Following css code will apply some makeup to our menu

#navigation {
position: relative;
text-align:center;
}
#navigation li {
position: relative;
list-style: none;
display: inline-block;
margin: 0 20px;
}
#navigation li a {
padding: 5px;
display: block;
font-family: 'Open Sans', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 14px;
font-weight: 700;
color: #3b3b3b;
text-align: left;
text-shadow: 1px 1px 0 rgba(255,255,255,0.25);
}
#navigation li:hover .main {
color: #ee4e1d;
}
#navigation li .sub-nav-wrapper {
display: block;
position: absolute;
z-index: 30;
margin-left: -16px;
}
#navigation li .sub-nav-wrapper .sub-nav {
width: 150px;
margin-top: 10px;
background: #fff;
border-top: 1px solid #fff;
box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,0.35);
-moz-box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,0.35);
-webkit-box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,0.35);
}
#navigation li:hover .sub-nav-wrapper {
display: block;
}
#navigation li .sub-nav-wrapper .sub-nav li {
list-style: none;
display: block;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
text-align: left;
border-bottom: 1px solid #d7d7d7;
}
#navigation li .sub-nav-wrapper .sub-nav li:first-child {
}
#navigation li .sub-nav-wrapper .sub-nav li:last-child {
border: none;
}
#navigation li .sub-nav-wrapper .sub-nav li a {
display: block;
padding: 11px 20px;
font-size: 12px;
font-weight: 600;
text-shadow: 1px 1px 0 rgba(255,255,255,1.0);
box-shadow: inset 0 0 2px rgba(255,255,255,1.0);
-moz-box-shadow: inset 0 0 2px rgba(255,255,255,1.0);
-webkit-box-shadow: inset 0 0 2px rgba(255,255,255,1.0);
}
#navigation li .sub-nav-wrapper .sub-nav li:hover {
background: #f5f5f5;
border-bottom: 1px solid #3b3b3b;
}

And now this is the easy and most important part of this tutorial, making the sub-menu functional with pure css

a, #navigation li .sub-nav-wrapper .sub-nav li {
transition: all 0.5s;
-moz-transition: all 0.5s;
-webkit-transition: all 0.5s;
}
#navigation li .sub-nav-wrapper {
pointer-events: none;
opacity: 0;
filter: alpha(opacity=0);
top: 0;
transition: all 0.35s ease-in-out;
-moz-transition: all 0.35s ease-in-out;
-webkit-transition: all 0.35s ease-in-out;
}
#navigation li:hover .sub-nav-wrapper {
pointer-events: auto;
opacity: 1;
filter: alpha(opacity=100);
top: 30px;
}

With this styling we will be applying some CSS3 transition effects to make a smooth dropdown action. You may have noticed that we have used a css property called pointer-events. When we will assign none value to this property, we are actually disabling the click event on that particular element. When we assign a value auto, then we are allowing the click event. You can know more about pointer-event here CSS pointer-events.

In this way, we have created a beautiful and simple dropdown menu suing CSS only. Have a look on what we have created