Css – Transitions on the CSS display property

csscss-transitions

I'm currently designing a CSS 'mega dropdown' menu – basically a regular CSS-only dropdown menu, but one that contains different types of content.

At the moment, it appears that CSS 3 transitions don't apply to the 'display' property, i.e., you can't do any sort of transition from display: none to display: block (or any combination).

Is there a way for the second-tier menu from the above example to 'fade in' when someone hovers over one of the top level menu items?

I'm aware that you can use transitions on the visibility: property, but I can't think of a way to use that effectively.

I've also tried using height, but that just failed miserably.

I'm also aware that it's trivial to achieve this using JavaScript, but I wanted to challenge myself to use just CSS, and I think I'm coming up a little short.

Best Answer

You can concatenate two transitions or more, and visibility is what comes handy this time.

div {
  border: 1px solid #eee;
}
div > ul {
  visibility: hidden;
  opacity: 0;
  transition: visibility 0s, opacity 0.5s linear;
}
div:hover > ul {
  visibility: visible;
  opacity: 1;
}

<div>
  <ul>
    <li>Item 1</li>
    <li>Item 2</li>
    <li>Item 3</li>
  </ul>
</div>

(Don't forget the vendor prefixes to the transition property.)

Related Solutions

Html – Set cellpadding and cellspacing in CSS

Basics

For controlling "cellpadding" in CSS, you can simply use padding on table cells. E.g. for 10px of "cellpadding":

td { 
    padding: 10px;
}

For "cellspacing", you can apply the border-spacing CSS property to your table. E.g. for 10px of "cellspacing":

table { 
    border-spacing: 10px;
    border-collapse: separate;
}

This property will even allow separate horizontal and vertical spacing, something you couldn't do with old-school "cellspacing".

Issues in IE ≤ 7

This will work in almost all popular browsers except for Internet Explorer up through Internet Explorer 7, where you're almost out of luck. I say "almost" because these browsers still support the border-collapse property, which merges the borders of adjoining table cells. If you're trying to eliminate cellspacing (that is, cellspacing="0") then border-collapse:collapse should have the same effect: no space between table cells. This support is buggy, though, as it does not override an existing cellspacing HTML attribute on the table element.

In short: for non-Internet Explorer 5-7 browsers, border-spacing handles you. For Internet Explorer, if your situation is just right (you want 0 cellspacing and your table doesn't have it defined already), you can use border-collapse:collapse.

table { 
    border-spacing: 0;
    border-collapse: collapse;
}

Note: For a great overview of CSS properties that one can apply to tables and for which browsers, see this fantastic Quirksmode page.

CSS 100% height with padding/margin

I learned how to do these sort of things reading "PRO HTML and CSS Design Patterns". The display:block is the default display value for the div, but I like to make it explicit. The container has to be the right type; position attribute is fixed, relative, or absolute.

.stretchedToMargin {
  display: block;
  position:absolute;
  height:auto;
  bottom:0;
  top:0;
  left:0;
  right:0;
  margin-top:20px;
  margin-bottom:20px;
  margin-right:80px;
  margin-left:80px;
  background-color: green;
}

<div class="stretchedToMargin">
  Hello, world
</div>

Fiddle by Nooshu's comment

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Html – Set cellpadding and cellspacing in CSS

CSS 100% height with padding/margin

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