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460

answers:

1

This is probably (hopefully) a pretty simple question, but I can't seem to get it to work so I'll turn to the experts here. I'm using a pretty straightforward CSS drop-down menu, with just a little JQuery involved. The issue is that when I hover over the drop-down and it opens, it's pushing everything on the page down below it rather then opening over it. I've tried messing with the z-index but that doesn't seem to be the issue. Any tips would be fantastic, thanks in advance.

Here's the HTML; sorry it's not super-pretty, I had to rip out a bunch of stuff to make it simple and generic.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"&gt; 
<HTML style="zoom: 100%; "> 
<HEAD> 
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.0/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 
</HEAD> 
<BODY class="bodyclass" style="background:#BCE2F1; height: 100%;"> 

<DIV id="maincontainer" style="min-height: 100%;"> 
  <STYLE type="text/css"> 
    #cssdropdown, #cssdropdown ul { font-size: 9pt; background-color: black; list-style: none; }
    #cssdropdown, #cssdropdown * { padding: 0; margin: 0; }
    #cssdropdown li.headlink { width: 140px; float: left; margin-left: -1px; border: 1px black solid;
          background-color: white; text-align: center; }
    #cssdropdown li.headlink a { display: block; color: #339804; padding: 3px; text-decoration: none; }
      #cssdropdown li.headlink a:hover { background-color: #F8E0AC; font-weight: bold; }
    #cssdropdown li.headlink ul { display: none; border-top: 1px black solid; text-align: left; }
    #cssdropdown li.headlink:hover ul { display: block; text-decoration: none; }
    #cssdropdown li.headlink ul li a { padding: 5px; height: 15px; }
    #cssdropdown li.headlink ul li a:hover { background-color: #CCE9F5; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal; }
    /* #cssdropdown a { color: #CCE9F5; } */
      #cssdropdown ul li a:hover { text-decoration: none; }
    #cssdropdown li.headlink { background-color: white; }
    #cssdropdown li.headlink ul { background-color: white; background-position: bottom; padding-bottom: 2px; }
  </STYLE> 
  <SCRIPT language="JavaScript"> 
    $(document).ready(function(){
        $('#cssdropdown li.headlink').hover(
            function() { $('ul', this).css('display', 'block'); },
            function() { $('ul', this).css('display', 'none'); });
    });
  </SCRIPT> 

  <DIV class="navigation_box" style="border: none;"> 
    <DIV class="innercontent"> 
      <DIV style="background: white; float: left; padding: 5px; border: solid 1px black;"> 
      LOGO
      </DIV> 
      <DIV class="navmenu" style="float: right; bottom: 0; font-size: 9pt; text-align: right;"> 
        <SPAN>Logged in as [email protected]</SPAN><BR> 
        <UL id="cssdropdown"> 
            <LI class="headlink"> 
                <A href="http://localhost:3000/one"&gt;One&lt;/A&gt; 

                <UL style="display: none; "> 
                    <LI><A href="http://localhost:3000/one"&gt;Option One</A></LI> 
                    <LI><A href="http://localhost:3000/one"&gt;Option Two</A></LI> 
                    <LI><A href="http://localhost:3000/one"&gt;Option Three</A></LI> 
                    <LI><A href="http://localhost:3000/one"&gt;Option Four</A></LI> 
                </UL> 
            </LI> 
            <LI class="headlink"> 
                <A href="http://localhost:3000/two"&gt;Two&lt;/A&gt; 

                <UL style="display: none; "> 
                    <LI><A href="http://localhost:3000/two"&gt;Option Two-One</A></LI> 
                    <LI><A href="http://localhost:3000/two"&gt;Option Two-Two</A></LI> 
                    <LI><A href="http://localhost:3000/two"&gt;Option Two-Three</A></LI> 
                </UL> 
            </LI> 
            <LI class="headlink" style="width: 80px;"> 
              <A href="http://localhost:3000/three"&gt;Three&lt;/A&gt; 
            </LI> 
            <LI class="headlink" style="width: 300px; padding-top: 2px; height: 19px;"> 
              <FORM action="http://localhost:3000/search" method="post"> 
                  <P> 
                    Search:
                    <INPUT id="searchwords" name="searchwords" size="20" type="text" value=""> 
                    <INPUT name="commit" type="submit" value="Find"> 
                  </P> 
              </FORM> 
            </LI> 
          <LI class="headlink" style="width: 60px;"> 
            <A href="http://localhost:3000/four"&gt;Four&lt;/A&gt; 
          </LI> 
          <LI class="headlink" style="width: 60px;"> 
                        <A href="http://localhost:3000/logout"&gt;Logout&lt;/A&gt; 
      </LI> 
        </UL> 
      </DIV> 
    </DIV> 
  </DIV> 
  <DIV id="contentwrapper" style="clear:both"> 
    <DIV class="innercontent" style="margin: 0px 20px 20px 20px;"> 
      <H1>Some test content here to fill things out a little bit.</H1> 
    </DIV> 
  </DIV> 
</DIV> 
<DIV id="footer" style="clear: both; float: bottom;"> 
  <DIV class="innercontent" style="font-size: 10px;"> 
    Copyright 2008-2010
  </DIV> 
</DIV> 
</BODY> 
+3  A: 

This is a pretty bad case of unnecessary Javascript to do what can be done via CSS itself. One way or another all you have to do is change:

#cssdropdown li.headlink ul { display: none; border-top: 1px black solid; text-align: left;}

to:

#cssdropdown li.headlink ul { display: none; border-top: 1px black solid; text-align: left;position:absolute;}

Here's an example of an extremely simple and clean drop down menu. Hope it helps you out a bit. I added a lot of comments to help you figure out what the CSS is doing to the HTML.

    <style type="text/css">

    /* Get ride of default margin's and padding */
    ul, li {
        margin: 0;
        padding: 0;
    }

    /* Display parent unordered list items horizontally */
    ul li {
        float: left;
        list-style: none;       /* Get rid of default Browser styling */
        margin-right: 10px;     /* Add some space between items */
    }

        /* Hide inset unordered Lists */
        ul li ul {
            display: none;
        }

        /* Un-Hide inset unordered Lists when parent <li> is hovered over */
        ul li:hover ul {
            display: block;
            position: absolute;
        }

            /* Clear the any element that may be "float: left;" (Essentially moves the item to the next line */
            ul li:hover ul li {
                clear: left;            
            }

    </style>
    <ul>
        <li>
            <a href="#" title="">Link 1</a>
            <ul>
                <li><a href="#" title="">Link 1.1</a></li>
                <li><a href="#" title="">Link 1.2</a></li>
                <li><a href="#" title="">Link 1.3</a></li>
                <li><a href="#" title="">Link 1.4</a></li>
                <li><a href="#" title="">Link 1.5</a></li>
                <li><a href="#" title="">Link 1.6</a></li>
            </ul>
        </li>
        <li>
            <a href="#" title="">Link 2</a>
            <ul>
                <li><a href="#" title="">Link 2.1</a></li>
                <li><a href="#" title="">Link 2.2</a></li>
                <li><a href="#" title="">Link 2.3</a></li>
                <li><a href="#" title="">Link 2.4</a></li>
                <li><a href="#" title="">Link 2.5</a></li>
                <li><a href="#" title="">Link 2.6</a></li>
            </ul>
        </li>
        <li>
            <a href="#" title="">Link 3</a>
            <ul>
                <li><a href="#" title="">Link 3.1</a></li>
                <li><a href="#" title="">Link 3.2</a></li>
                <li><a href="#" title="">Link 3.3</a></li>
                <li><a href="#" title="">Link 3.4</a></li>
                <li><a href="#" title="">Link 3.5</a></li>
                <li><a href="#" title="">Link 3.6</a></li>
        </ul>
    </li>
</ul>
Thanks very much, that did do it. I had experimented with absolute positioning but hadn't hit on the right place for it; I'm more of a back-end developer and still mediocre with CSS tricks.As you can guess, I adopted this drop-down menu solution. I take it I should look at doing a csshover rather than the JQuery piece? Any pointers/links to info would be great, and I'll check it out.
Masonoise
I updated my answer to include a simple CSS+HTML Drop Down menu. Hope it helps and gives you some direction.
Cool, thanks again! I will give it a go, very much appreciated.
Masonoise