CSS tabs with Submenus

Being a CSS newbie, I’m still trying to figure out how this magic works! How does the passed url translate into a different body class? Although the demo seems to be a single page, its tabs can be referenced with distinct urls. I’ve also looked at other sites listed here where the content changes from tab to tab.

Amazingly cool stuff, but I could really use some help in understanding it before I’ll be able to implement it.

Thanks!

Trimble: in case you haven’t figured it out, it actually is different pages but only the id on the body tag is different.

hi, i’ve been working on a project for which i was testing whether tabs (in a form for html)work for various browsers.it works fine for IE but for netscape(6.1 &6.2)the use of the tab key doesn’t seem to work.is there any wokaround or any authenticated document supporting this?any pointers are appreciated.

Hi!

Your CSS Tabs Rocks!

One question, what I need to do to remove the underline for all buttons? Only I want a rectangle, witout underline.

Tnx in advance!

Regards from Monterrey, México.

@ndrés

Thanks Alan,

Yes, I did eventually figure out how the body id tag controlled the menu’s style. I’ve implemented the menus inside of Div containers and control the their style that way. I love the flexibility and scalability of the menu, but do have a couple of new questions, though.

Is it possible to position the subnav links so that they are relatively positioned to the tabs? Their absolute positioning has been a real pain in the neck for me, as I’d like to use the menus across pages with different side and top margins.

Also, has anyone been able to adapt this css to function as a dropdown menu? CSS-based dropdowns I thus far seen are not nearly so elegant or scale so well as Adam’s, and they don’t degrade well on browsers with limited CSS support (like most PDAs).

Cheers!

Hi Adam, Love your tabs and especially the sub-navigation. I’m implementing them on a client’s site, and things look great. I had just one issue: controlling where the sub-menu starts without absolute positioning.

View Test Site http://www.consumer-action.org/housing/test_navigation/ The site layout isn’t fully flexible. Basically, the center container has a defined width, and everything else floats. For the sub-navigation, I removed the absolute {left: 10px; } and the menu kind of floated; but irritating enough, didn’t start until after the main-tab that it was associated with.

I played around with a variety of elements before finally giving the display property: block; a go. This seemed to work, except with some Internet Expolorer issues. Or I should say, it displayed properly on Mac OS X 10.4.x under Safari, Camino, Firefox, and Shiira, and it also displayed properly on Windows 2000/2003 with Netscape 7.2, but only adequately under Internet Explorer 6.x.

I’m no CSS guru. I’m fairly compotent at composing stylesheet; but still only have a basic understanding of why some rules work or don’t work in various situations. I’m wondering if you can think of any “gotchas” from my current approach, versus using your absolute positioning. The site is one of a series of sites, and all of them are contained in a center float, so I’d rather not tie this one down to absolute positioning just to get the navigation items working.

Thanks.

Hi!

Your tabs navigation is exactly what I was looking for, thanks!

But I figured out some more: To do an easier positioning of the submenu, I put the whole tab-menu into a div-container with the property “position: relative”. Now all enclosed tags with the property “position: absolute” are positioned relatively to the enclosing div. For explorer to work, you have to give the uppermost ul the property “position: static”, because explorer otherwise seems to inherit the “position” property from the enclosing div.

Furthermore I enhanced your menu to allow some javascript navigation.

See yourself at http://neu.nabeba.de

I’m planing to document this stuff a bit more understandable as soon as I find the time.

Your Tabs Rock!

Hi again!

Unfortunatly the javascript-enhance tabs-navigation I mentioned two posts before is not found under the old URL.

This is because it’s the location where I test new stuff before implementing it at the live site. IF you are interested how the javascript stuff looks like: http://www.nabeba.de .

Still, I did not find the time to write a brief tutorial.

i saw some of these tabs on a jeans and clothing website luxuriousgear.com

I’ve tried your demo but it breaks up in IE7

Am about to embed your tabs (sans sub-menus) in a brand new time-clock product — you know, the kind in so many warehouses that employees use to punch in / out. The clock features an embedded web server. The product is distributed through major retailers (e.g. Best Buy, Costco, etc.). If it passes our cross-browser testing, it ships ;-)

Good work on keeping things simple and elegant. Thanks.

To make the submenus look good in IE7, change the css rules that go:

body.section-1 #menu ul#subnav-1, etc.,

change: top: 95px

to: top: 100px.

Obviously, this will change the way things look in other browsers, so this is not the final solution. Hopefully someone will be able to use this lead to fix the stylesheet.

I am trying to display a div a ta time on a single html page using css tabs and a javascript function to unhide the correct div and hide the other divs. It works fine but the first time the page loads, all the tabs are in the inactive style. I cannot use the body style for showing the correct active tab. I need to have the left most tab show as active when the page loads but behave as any other tab once any other tab is clicked. I tried generating a click event to change the background on load event, etc. but the display is not affected. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.

I am trying to re create the tabs but only want the sub nav as the main nav. I want to know what type of files as the tools/csstabs/1 , /2, /3 and /4? are they just seperate CSS files? Also I don’t want to go to a new page everytime you click one of the buttons. I just want the text to change?

Could you help me out with this matter?

Thanks