With the amount of content available online these days, we sometimes have to resort to using different techniques in order to show/hide/group some content or information on a web page.
Content sliders are very popular because they work and usually don’t hinder usability and in many cases can even improve the user experience. Today we’ll learn how to create a stylish content slider using CSS3 and some jQuery magic.
Now let’s get to it!
HTML
Let’s start with the HTML. First we’re going to create an unordered list, with four list-items and wrap it all in a div with the id ‘navbar’. Three list-items should have the class ‘inactive’ and one (the active one obviously) should have the ‘active’ class. Two logical choices to add notifications to are ‘Projects’ and ‘To-do’, so create a span with the class ‘notification’ after the link text.
[html]
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Stylish CSS3 & jQuery Content Slider</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style-slider.css" />
</head>
<body>
<div id="navbar">
<ul>
<li class="active"><a href="#" title="Projects">Projects<span class="notification">34</span></a></li>
<li class="inactive"><a href="#" title="Contacts">Contacts</a></li>
<li class="inactive"><a href="#" title="Earnings">Earnings</a></li>
<li class="inactive"><a href="#" title="To-do">To-do<span class="notification">100</span></a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</body>
</html>
[/html]
Now open up another div, this time with the id ‘slider’. In here you’ll add some content, e.g four headers in ‘h2’ tags and some text in ‘p’ tags after each header. (You can change the text, but don’t change the tags since that’s what we’re going to use to create the slider. If you do add more tags (e.g 5 ‘h2’ tags) you have to have 5 list-items.
[html]
<div id="slider">
<h2>Projects</h2>
<p>Professionally cultivate stand-alone core competencies whereas distributed web services. </p>
<h2>Contacts</h2>
<p>Professionally cultivate stand-alone core competencies whereas distributed web services. Rapidiously streamline bleeding-edge total linkage after multidisciplinary networks. </p>
<h2>Earnings</h2>
<p>Professionally cultivate stand-alone core competencies whereas distributed web services. Rapidiously streamline bleeding-edge total linkage after multidisciplinary networks. Authoritatively create multifunctional methodologies through premier collaboration and idea-sharing. </p>
<h2>To-do</h2>
<p>Professionally cultivate stand-alone core competencies whereas distributed web services. Rapidiously streamline bleeding-edge total linkage after multidisciplinary networks. Authoritatively create multifunctional methodologies through premier collaboration and idea-sharing. Phosfluorescently evisculate global manufactured products whereas customized total linkage. Appropriately optimize resource maximizing core competencies via an expanded array of functionalities.</p>
</div>
[/html]
That was quick? At the moment it should look like this. Now we’ll add some style to the whole thing.
CSS
If you like you can use Eric Meyer’s CSS reset, but in our case this should be enough.
[html]
* {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
body {
font-family: helvetica, tahoma, Sans-serif;
font-size: 13px;
background: url(images/bg.jpg) repeat;
}
[/html]
Set the margin and padding to 0 (using ‘*’), the font stack to helvetica/tahoma/sans-serif, the font size to 13px and the background to the image on the right → (using the body tag). Make sure you set it to repeat, meaning it won’t display only once, instead it will be repeated horizontally and vertically across the entire page.
Style the links, just add text-decoration: none. In case you have any links in your content part, you may want to add color , etc.
[html]
a {
text-decoration: none;
}
[/html]
Next we’ll style the h2 and paragraph tags. Nothing really hard there except for maybe the text-shadow. The first value is the x-offset, the second is the y-offset, the third is the blur and the last value is the color. More on this at Line25.com.
[html]
h2 {
font-family: Helvetica, tahoma, Sans-serif;
font-size: 25px;
font-weight: bold;
text-shadow: 0 1px 1px white;
}
p {
text-shadow: 0 1px 1px white;
}
[/html]
Next, the navbar div. The width is set to 650px, and margins (top, right, bottom, left) are 20px, 0, 0 and 40px. I personally think that bold font looks better here, but that’s just my opinion :)
[html]
#navbar {
margin: 20px 0 0 40px;
width: 650px;
font-weight: bold;
}
[/html]
All unordered list items should display as an inline block. The ul li a (unordered list-items links) position is set to relative. They should display as a block, have a set width of 150px and text should be aligned in the center. By setting a width and aligning the text in the center, we can assure all list-items have the same width.
[html]
ul li{
display: inline-block;
}
ul li a {
position: relative;
display: block;
width: 150px;
text-align: center;
}
[/html]
Now to the active state of the links. Here I’m using bunches of CSS3, which isn’t supported by all browsers. In case you want to read more about CSS3 support, especially in IE, check out CSS3Pie (thanks @tracker1).
Two things: I recently discovered ‘-webkit-background-clip: padding-box’ via Sneak. Try comparing the border radius with and without the background clip, you’ll definitely notice the difference. Z-index is used to determine the order of overlapping objects, the highest number is at the top.
To remove the ugly outline when clicked on, set the outline of the ‘:focus’ pseudo class to none.
[html]
.active a{
padding: 28px 0 20px 0;
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#db0000), to(#9b0000));
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top center, #db0000, #9b0000);
border: 1px solid #8d0000;
text-shadow: 0 1px 1px black;
-webkit-border-radius: 10px 10px 0 0;
-webkit-background-clip: padding-box;
-webkit-box-shadow: inset 0 0 1px #fd0000;
-moz-border-radius: 10px 10px 0 0;
-moz-background-clip: padding-box;
-moz-box-shadow: inset 0 0 1px #fd0000;
margin-left: -5px;
z-index: 2;
color: white;
text-shadow: 0 1px 1px black;
}
.active a:focus {
outline: none;
}
[/html]
Next up: inactive class. The inactive class is similar to the active class, just less padding, a different gradient and no border radius. This time the z-index is 1, since the active button should display above the inactive buttons. Here too, set the outline of the ‘:focus’ pseudo class to none.
[html]
.inactive a:hover {
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left bottom, left top, from(#eee), to(#ddd));
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top center, #ddd, #eee);
}
.inactive a {
color: #222;
text-shadow: 0 1px 1px white;
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#eee), to(#ddd));
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top center, #eee, #ddd);
-webkit-box-shadow: inset 0 0 5px white;
-moz-box-shadow: inset 0 0 5px white;
padding: 20px 0;
-webkit-box-shadow: inset 0 0 5px white;
-moz-box-shadow: inset 0 0 5px white;
border: 1px solid #ccc;
margin-left: -5px;
z-index: 1;
}
.inactive a:focus {
outline: none;
}
[/html]
Almost done (with the style anyway). You can leave out the notifications, but I think they look good, that’s why I’ve added them. Be sure to set the min-width to 15px so they can’t get any smaller than a perfect circle, and add a margin-left to add some distance between the link text and the circle.
[html]
span.notification {
position: absolute;
padding: 5px;
margin-top: -6px;
color: white;
min-width: 15px;
text-align: center;
border: 1px solid #000;
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#2a2a2a), to(#222));
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top center, #2a2a2a, #222);
-webkit-box-shadow: inset 0 0 1px #333;
-moz-box-shadow: inset 0 0 1px #333;
text-shadow: 0 -1px 1px black;
-webkit-border-radius: 50px;
-moz-border-radius: 50px;
margin-left: 10px;
}
[/html]
They should look similar to this:
The slider is a div which contains all text content. Set the width to 555px. If you somehow change the width of the list-elements you have to change this value (555px) too. I set the background to ‘rgba(255,255,255,0.3)’. This may be new to some of you. The first three values (separated by commas) is the RGB value of the color (e.g white -> #fff -> 255,255,255). The last value is the opacity, from 0 (invisible) to 1 (100% opacity). If you know the hex value of a color, but not the RGB value (or vice versa) you can use this helpful app called Hex-to-RGB Conversion.
[html]
#slider {
width: 555px;
background: rgba(250,250,250,0.3);
padding: 30px 25px 30px 25px;
line-height: 25px;
margin-left: 35px;
}
[/html]
This is what you should have so far:
jQuery
Now your design should be looking pretty good, but there’s one problem: try clicking on a link. Does it work? No, I thought so. This is where jQuery comes in. A friend introduced me to this (fabulous, awesome, incredible…) javascript framework and I’ve using it ever since. I’m still a novice, but this code is pretty simple.
In your head section, import Google’s jQuery library and create two script tags to insert your code (directly before the header closing tag).
[html]
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.1/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
</script>
[/html]
We’ll start out with document -> ready -> function. What this tells the browser is that once the document has loaded, execute the function inside the curly brackets.
[html]
$(document).ready(function(){
});
[/html]
Next we’ll create the click function. When the user clicks on a ‘li’ element, the following function is performed.
[html]
$(‘li’).click(function(){
});
[/html]
First, assign the variable ‘number’ to this’ index. ‘This’ is the ‘li’ element we clicked on. Since we don’t have different classes for each list-item, ‘.index()’ gets which position the item has (starting with 0. e.g I click on the second list-item (contacts) and index would return ‘1’).
[html]
$(‘li’).click(function(){
var number = $(this).index();
});
[/html]
We’ll continue with this:
[html]
$(‘li’).click(function(){
var number = $(this).index();
$(‘h2’).hide().eq(number).show();
$(‘p’).hide().eq(number).show();
});
[/html]
This piece of code is quite simple. It selects all ‘h2’ (respectively ‘p’) elements and hides them, except if their position (eq) is equal to that of ‘this’ (var number), meaning it shows them. The jQuery docs page does a great job at explaining this by the way.
Next we’ll toggle the classes of the list-item (still ‘this’) clicked on with toggleClass, remove the active class and add the inactive class to all ‘li’s that are not ‘this’. After that we can close the click function.
[html]
$(‘li’).click(function(){
var number = $(this).index();
$(‘h2’).hide().eq(number).show();
$(‘p’).hide().eq(number).show();
$(this).toggleClass(‘active inactive’);
$(‘li’).not(this).removeClass(‘active’).addClass(‘inactive’);
});
[/html]
Finally we’ll select all h2 (and p) elements that aren’t the first of their kind and hide them. This will only be executed once, and only to make sure only the ‘Projects’ heading and paragraph text is displayed.
[html]
$(document).ready(function(){
$(‘li’).click(function(){
var number = $(this).index();
$(‘h2’).hide().eq(number).show();
$(‘p’).hide().eq(number).show();
$(this).toggleClass(‘active inactive’);
$(‘li’).not(this).removeClass(‘active’).addClass(‘inactive’);
});
$(‘h2’).not(‘:first’).hide();
$(‘p’).not(‘:first’).hide();
});
[/html]
Final result:
Demo & Download
Conclusion – Share Your Thoughts
Well, we’re done. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and improved your coding skills by a little (or by far). Please leave your opinion in the comment section. Constructive feedback is welcome! :)
Author: Eric Hoffman
Eric Hoffman is a young American freelance web and brand identity designer based in Switzerland, working under the brand hatchergraphics (portfolio coming soon). He enjoys reading, swimming, going to school (yes, I do) and tweeting. If you’d like to connect with him, you should follow him on Twitter as @erichoffman
Problem is, if you click a LI twice, it will have the “inactive” class due to the use of toggle() … otherwise, nice one! :)
My concern is that CSS3 is not supported by our grandpas browsers (See: IE7) which won’t support all CSS3 selectors… This slider looks great, but I guess I’ll have to patch some CSS3 code with jQuery in order to have it fully compatible!
Any hint?
Thanks for your great article!
@Nico Opps! Not intended :). Thanks :)
@Pierre Yes, I know CSS3 is not supported by some browsers. If you like, you can replace CSS3 elements (like gradients etc.) with images. I like using CSS3 because it’s clean and easy to edit. An article (by yours truly) should show up soon (follow me on twitter, I’ll tweet about it) on the pros and cons of CSS3.
Thanks:)
Eric
Nice tutorial Eric – many thanks :)
Great tutorial, and great follow up to commenters’ questions. :)
Well explained.Good tutorial.
Thanks @brett! And thanks for all the tweets!
Hello,
this is a great one. And it looks good too.
Still there are some rendering issues in Iron (which is basically the same as chrome). It looks like the background has no border-radius. The boxes actually do have it.
Any recommendations how to solve this?
Hi nice tut :)
But … Am I the only on who gets square corners around the rounded corners on chrome (6.0.472.62 updated yesterday)
Thanks! @Chris, could you show me an image of the issue?
Nice!
Apparently the -webkit-box-shadow with the inset property prevents the -webkit-border-radius from clipping the background.
So the rectangular background pops out from behind the rounded corners, both on a and span > a.
This is in Chromium 7.0.528.0 (59761) Ubuntu 10.04.
This is very good. Thanks for share
i dont think it works in chrome
Good tutorial. Thanks
Working fine but looks bad in web-kit based browsers…
The rounded top corners of the tabs have a red background and the numbers are surrounded by squares beside the circles …
I’m not sure what’s up… but the demo doesn’t work in Opera at all (tabs don’t even render), and in Fx and Chrome the tabs look fine but no sliding happens; it’s just a tabbed content area.
I admit I’m at a loss for attention sometimes, so I didn’t read the whole article; I just jumped right to the demo to see how it looked in order to decide if I wanted to follow the tutorial. If it’s meant to be a tabbed area with no animation (sliding) then maybe it’s working after all. ;-)
Thanks! @haz could it be that you are using an older version of chrome, since I’m using 7.0.517.8 (I think…) and it displays correctly.
It only works in webkit browsers. Maybe you should update you browsers?
I’ve tested it in Safari 5.0.2, Chrome 6.0.472.62 and Firefox 3.6.3 it displayed ok in all 3 browsers (Mac OS X 10.6.4) all the effects rendered fine. I also tried it in Opera and as Greg mentioned above, the tabs don’t render, but the layout is still functional.
Hm I’ve just downloaded the demo and there is no sliding at all.
Tested in latest Chrome 6.0.472.62 … nothing, Sir.
I will dig into the code. :)
Okay, the jQuery code could look like this (at least this code works for me):
[code]
$(document).ready(function(){
$(‘li’).click(function(){
var number = $(this).index();
$(‘h2’).slideUp(400).eq(number).slideDown(400);
$(‘p’).slideUp(400).eq(number).slideDown(400);
$(this).toggleClass(‘active inactive’);
$(‘li’).not(this).removeClass(‘active’).addClass(‘inactive’);
});
$(‘h2’).not(‘:first’).hide();
$(‘p’).not(‘:first’).hide();
});
[/code]
$(‘h2’).slideUp(400).eq(number).slideDown(400);
$(‘p’).slideUp(400).eq(number).slideDown(400);
Oh sorry, please delete my comment before this one. I have modified the code again to prevent the active/inactive thing:
It could look like this:
$(document).ready(function(){
$(‘li’).click(function(){
var number = $(this).index();
$(‘h2’).slideUp(400).eq(number).slideDown(400);
$(‘p’).slideUp(400).eq(number).slideDown(400);
$(‘li’).removeClass(‘inactive’).addClass(‘active’);
$(‘li’).not(this).removeClass(‘active’).addClass(‘inactive’);
});
$(‘h2’).not(‘:first’).hide();
$(‘p’).not(‘:first’).hide();
});
Thanks @Michael! It doesn’t have a sliding effect, it uses fade in and out. :)
Eric
Here’s the code: http://jsfiddle.net/bcJHC/1/
See, the version at jsfiddle ‘works’. It’d definitely doing slideDown. The demo from here doesn’t work on the latest stable build of Chrome.
@Greg: That’s weird, I just tried it again in Chrome (latest build) and it worked just fine. In fact both the demo here and the one on jsfiddle worked ok for me using Chrome, Safari and Firefox – all latest versions.
The jsfiddle demo is the code I provided.
As far as I know CSS3 fading is done with transitions, no?
In the demo code (downloaded) there is no transition in the CSS… huh?
Hi Guys,
Nice work!
I’m looking into these content sliders right now and i wonder if there is any study or best practice for the ‘perfect’ time between a slide and the ‘perfect’ number of images.
I tried to count and measure myself everytime i stumbled upon a content slider but the results weren’t really satisfying…
hi,
really cool tutorial.I have started learning web design only know in that way this tutorial is really cool.
Can you help me out with this?
——————————————
I am trying to develop a website.I am using more number of list items, in different classes.when i try using this code the effect is getting applied to all my list items.So how can i add a particular class to this list?so that the effect is applied only the class of list where i am using these…..please help!!!!
It’s very beautiful slider. I tried and change this slider to vertical and it’s open like new pages. Can you help me with the following?
I want to have an anchor which the hyperlink goes to another page and the second h2 of navbar , i tried this but always goes to the first h2 of navbar. Always when i load a page like http://www.example.com/test.htm#test2 doesn’t load the second (test2 is the second from the list) but always the first .
(these two pages has this slider but vertical)
Thanks .