How to dynamically change the color of the selected menu item of a web page?
I am new to developing web pages. I am looking to create menus similar to the ones in stackoverflow.com (like Questions, Tags, Users shown above). How do I change the color of the selected menu (for example, the background color of the Question changes to orange when 'clicked')?
I have managed to change the color while hovering (using CSS) as that was simple, but I am having trouble with this.
Can I achieve this effect of changing the color of a clicked item using only CSS?
Answer
Set the styles for class active and hover:
Than you need to make the li active, on the server side. So when you are drawing the menu, you should know which page is loaded and set it to:
<li class="active">Question</li>
<li>Tags</li>
<li>Users</li>
But if you are changing the content without reloading, you cannot change set the active li element on the server, you need to use javascript:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.5.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
<style>
.menu{width: 300px; height: 25; font-size: 18px;}
.menu li{list-style: none; float: left; margin-right: 4px; padding: 5px;}
.menu li:hover, .menu li.active {
background-color: #f90;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<ul class="menu">
<li>Item 1</li>
<li class="active">Item 2</li>
<li>Item 3</li>
<li>Item 4</li>
<li>Item 5</li>
<li>Item 6</li>
</ul>
<script type="text/javascript">
var make_button_active = function()
{
//Get item siblings
var siblings =($(this).siblings());
//Remove active class on all buttons
siblings.each(function (index)
{
$(this).removeClass('active');
}
)
//Add the clicked button class
$(this).addClass('active');
}
//Attach events to menu
$(document).ready(
function()
{
$(".menu li").click(make_button_active);
}
)
</script>
</body>
</html>