Dynamic menu items (change text on click)

Question

Hello, i need some help with a menu. See the following menu:

menu

The code for this menu:

    <div id="menu">
  <ul>
   <li class="home"><a href="#home" class="panel">home / <span class="go">you are here</span></a></li>
   <li class="about"><a href="#about" class="panel">about / <span class="go">go here</span></a></li>
   <li class="cases"><a href="#cases" class="panel">cases / <span class="go">go there</span></a></li>
   <li class="photos"><a href="#photos" class="panel">photos / <span class="go">maybe here</span></a></li>
   <li class="contact"><a href="#contact" class="panel">contact / <span class="go">or even here<span></span></a></li>
  </ul>
 </div>

What i want to do: onclick a menu item: 1. change the red text to yellow 'you are here' 2. change the previous menu item back to its original state (eg red and "go here").

The 4 values "go here", "go there", "maybe here", "or even here" are the 4 values that should be assigned to the other menu items (like the example).

This is the code i already have:

$('#menu ul li.home').addClass('active')
$('#menu ul li.active a .go').html("you are here");

$("#menu ul li").click(function () { 
$('#menu ul li.active').removeClass('active');
     $(this).addClass('active');
     $('#menu ul li.active a .go').html("you are here");
  });

  var arr = [ "go here", "go there", "maybe here", "or even here" ];
  var obj = { item1: "go here", item2: "go there" ,item3: "maybe here", item4: "or even here"};

  $('#menu ul li').click(function () {
   var str = $('#menu ul li.active a .go').text();
   $('#menu ul li.active a .go').html(str);
  });

As you see, it's incomplete. I don't how to get the values from the array and assign them too a menu item. The replace text works, but not the change-back-to-original-state. Also, right now, for some reason i can't click ONTO the list item itself in order to activate the jquery code. I need to click just a few pixels under it. But i guess that's a css issue.

If anyone can help, i'd be super thankful!

Regards,

Mathijs

Answer 1

This should work:

var msgs = [ "go here", "go there", "maybe here", "or even here" ];
var msgs_length = msgs.length;

$("#menu ul li").click(function () { 
     $('#menu ul li.active').removeClass('active');
     $(this).addClass('active');
     $('.go', this).text("you are here");

     $("#menu ul li").not(this).each(function(i) {
         $('.go', this).text(msgs[i % msgs_length]);
     });
});

Explanation:

• Use text() instead of .html() if you want to set text only
• $('.go', this) will find any element with class go inside the current element (read more about selector context)
• $("#menu ul li").not(this) selects all li elements besides the current one (read more about .not())
• i is the index of the element in the list of the selected elements (read more about .each())
• i % msgs_length (modulo) ensures that you always have a valid index for the message array (in case there are more menu items than messages)

---

I don't know if the color thing already works, but this is only a CSS issue:

#menu ul li .go {
    color: #FF0;
}

#menu ul li.active .go {
    color: #F00;
}

---

Update:

Btw instead of "manually" setting the value for the home list entry:

$('#menu ul li.home').addClass('active');
$('#menu ul li.active a .go').html("you are here");

consider to simulate a click so that the values for the other list elements are correctly set:

$('#menu li.home').click();

---

Update2:

To fix the "have-to-click-below" issue ;)

$("#menu ul li a").click(function () { 
     $('#menu ul li.active').removeClass('active');
     $(this).parent().addClass('active');
     $('.go', this).text("you are here");

     $("#menu ul li a").not(this).each(function(i) {
         $('.go', this).text(msgs[i % msgs_length]);
     });
});

Answer 2

This is the css

#menu {
position:  fixed;
top:  120px;
left:40px;
z-index: 40;
font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 0.6em;
text-transform: uppercase;
}

#menu ul li {
    float:  right;
}

#menu ul li a{
    background-color: #292929;
    display: block;
    padding: 12px 6px 4px 6px;
    text-align: right;
    margin-bottom: 9px;
    color: #f5f5f5;
    text-decoration: none;
}

#menu ul li.active a .go{
    color: #e4d555;
}

#menu ul li a:hover .go{
    color: #e4d555;
}

#menu ul li a:hover{
    text-decoration: none;
}

#menu ul li .go{
    font-family: Georgia, Serif;
    color: #ff0000;
    text-transform: lowercase;
    font-size:11px;
}