CSS Menus

[IanMarlowe]

I know this is probably an idiotic question, but what are those css friendly menus they have all over the place? How can you make a menu with CSS? It's not a scripting language.

[mwinter]

[...] what are those css friendly menus they have all over the place?

CSS-based menus tend to be more accessible as the links to other regions of the site are included as plain markup and only styled into a menu-like structure. This allows search engines, assistive technologies, script-disabled graphical browsers, and non-graphical browsers to navigate the site.

How can you make a menu with CSS? It's not a scripting language.

You're correct; it isn't. However, CSS does have interactive capabilities through the interactive pseudo-classes, hover, active, and focus. In response to these 'events', you can modify the presentation to show previously hidden content, move elements around, and so forth. The only problem is that IE is deficient and will require scripted support in order to produce the same effects. However, as long as the menu is well-written, the script dependence won't really matter as the menu can still degrade into the original markup.

Mike