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Experiments with Cascading Style Sheets

Variations on a drop-down theme

17th April 2006 - updated - 10th June 2006

copyright © stu nicholls - CSS play

Information

Another variation on the CSS only drop-down menu system.

This time, getting away from the rectangular links that I have used on my previous examples, I have chosen a different top level and sublevel styling to show that you are not limited to the earlier styling method.

This works in IE5.5, IE6, IE7, Firefox, Opera, Netscape 8 and Mac Firefox 1.5 and Safari though not Mac IE5.x.

This one does not have the extra sublevel items but these can easily be added.

Cascading Style Sheet

Because a lot of visitors are having trouble with the conditional comments and the cascading style sheets for this menu I have now removed the CSS to separate files and now show how to load these into the page.

If you look at the header of this page you will see that the normal method of loading a file is used for the non-ie browser css.

<link rel="stylesheet" media="all" type="text/css" href="css/drop_variation.css" />

The drop_variation.css file

The IE only style sheet is loaded using the conditional comment.

<!--[if lte IE 6]>
<link rel="stylesheet" media="all" type="text/css" href="css/drop_variation_ie.css" />
<![endif]-->

The drop_variation_ie.css file

10th June 2006

Because I have found that it is possible to combine the non-IE CSS and the IE CSS into one file without one style affecting the other I have backtracked to this example and combined the two CSS files. So the CSS is now ONE file and can be found here:

The drop_variation.css file

I have also added some comments to the css to make it easier to follow.

Hope you find this more useful and easier to follow. But be aware that the css will not validate due to the use of IE specific transparency.

The xhtml

The xhtml code for the flyout menu can be seen here in text format. Internet Explorer users may need to use 'view source' to see the actual markup.

You will see that conditional comments have been used to hold the IE5.5 and IE6 specific version of the menu which used nested tables with nested links. The other browsers will not see the nested links and instead will use the normal nested unordered lists.

Please note that you will also need a standards compliant !doctype for this menu to work correctly.

Copyright

Because of all the time and effort spent in producing this demonstration
I would ask that you respect my copyright.

1. If you are using this on a personal web site then please add a link back to CSSplay and retain any copyright comment in the stylesheet.
   A donation to the 'Support CSSplay' fund would be appreciated.
2. If you are using this on a commercial web site, or as a paying job for a client, then please email me asking for permission - stu{at}cssplay.co.uk and in this case a donation to the 'Support CSSplay' fund is required.
3. If you are having problems integrating any of my demonstrations into your website then I now offer a service to fault find and correct any errors that you may have introduced. Please email me for more information.