XP collapsible menu with description

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Introduction

This is an update of my previous article (WindowsXP Style Menu) which creates a Windows XP look alike Panel Bar with the separation of structure, presentation and functions. Now this menu is updated to support transparent popup description for every link inside it.

Since this article uses the same code of the previous article, I just show here the structure (HTML) of the menu which you can just copy and paste to create as many submenus inside it as you need, without writing a single line of code.

The Structure (HTML)

The complete HTML is in the source code.

<!-- begin the menu -->
<div id="MainMenu">
  <!-- begin submenu -->
  <span>
    <div style="width:180">
      <table cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" class="Menu_Head">
        <tr>
          <td width="90%">ASP.NET</td>
          <td><img src="down.gif" border="0"> </td>
        </tr>
      </table>
    </div>
    <div class="Menu_Items">
      <div>
        <div>
          <a href="">User Controls</a>
          <div class="Description">
            <div class="DescTitle">User Controls articles</div>
            View all articles about User Controls
          </div>
        </div>
        <div>
          <a href="">Server Controls</a>
          <div class="Description">
            <div class="DescTitle">Server Controls articles</div>
            Tutorials show you how to write server controls
          </div>
        </div>
        <div>
          <a href="">Custom Controls</a>
          <div class="Description">
            <div class="DescTitle">Custom Controls articles</div>
            Tutorials show you how to write advanced custom controls
          </div>
        </div>
        <div>
          <a href="">Applications</a>
          <div class="Description">
            <div class="DescTitle">Applications</div>
            View all demo applications like guestbook, forum...
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  </span>
  <!-- end sub menu -->
  ....

The structure is quite simple, the menu starts with the first <div> tag, each submenu is nested inside it with the <span> tag. The Submenu header (title) is nested inside the <div style="width:180"> and all the links are nested inside the <div class="Menu_Items">. After every link, you should have a <div> to contain its description, it will automatically show when you move the mouse over the link.

That's it for the menu. Hope this could help you a bit.

History

• 19 November 2002

  Fixed an expanding bug: clicking too fast on the expand/collapse button will result in an extra white space of the submenu. Thanks to Obliterator for pointing it out.