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CSS Menu Buttons

To create menu buttons that span the width of a container and change on mouseover (like the ones on this site) requires the use of two CSS features.

Pseudo-classes that allow you to add additional control to some elements, in this case links.
The CSS position property display that determines if an element is displayed inline or given a line to itself using block.

Creating a Pseudo-class with Display Set to Block

First create a pseudo-class for the links, which will be applied to the anchor element.

You have the option of controlling the appearance of the following link conditions.

An unvisited link - designated by link.
A visited link - designated by visited.
When the mouse is over the link - designated by hover.
When the link has been selected - designated by active

Note: For hover to work properly it must come after link and visited. For active to work properly it must come after hover.

Below is the style definition used on this site to create the menu buttons on the left.

The Style Sheet Document Called effects.css

.nav a:link {
display: block;
text-align: left;
background-color: #ffffff;
background: url(graphics/nav.jpg);
border-color: #cccccc;
border-style: solid;
border-width: 1px;
padding-left: 7px;
padding-bottom: 2px;
color:#000000;
text-decoration: none;
margin-bottom: 2px;
}
.nav a:visited {
display: block;
text-align: left;
background-color: #ffffff;
background: url(graphics/nav.jpg);
border-color: #cccccc;
border-style: solid;
border-width: 1px;
padding-left: 7px;
padding-bottom: 2px;
color:#666699;
text-decoration: none;
margin-bottom: 2px;
}
.nav a:hover {
display: block;
text-align: left;
background-color: #666666;
background: url(graphics/nav2.jpg);
border-color: #666666;
border-style: solid;
border-width: 1px;
padding-left: 7px;
padding-bottom: 2px;
color:#ffffff;
text-decoration: none;
margin-bottom: 2px;
}

Implementing the Buttons in HTML

This is done by using a span tag with the name of the pseudo-class to surround the links.

The HTML Document

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="effects.css" type="text/css">
</head>
<body>

<a href="css_tips_menu_buttons.php">Using block causes the button to fill the space available.</a>
<a href="css_tips_menu_buttons.php">Using block causes the button to fill the space available.</a>

</body>
</html>