Question

parent inherit from child - sort of

Asked by: CVSmarc

Hi all
At the moment i am looking to make a menu system were the all the sub items of the menu are hidden (and the sub nodes appear for each node when the user clicks on the parent node just like a normal menu) but were the as the user goes from page to page i want the menu to appear open up to the particular node that represents the current page the user is on. The way in which i am identifying this selected node is by giving it an ID or class name of "selectedNode". As this node could be several layers down (i am basing the menu around nested unordered) what i would like to do is some sort of inheritance were i give the class identified by "selectedNode" display:block instead of display:none and then i somehow say that the 'ul with a child element identified by "selectedNode" is display:block instead of display:none'.

Now i know you can do this the other way around by doing something like below
    #mainMenu ul {
        display:block
    }
and what this will do is make any child element that has the parent identified by "mainMenu" display. I need to do the reverse, so in others words a parent who’s child is identified by "selectedNode" will display.

Thanks
ant

This is a snippet of what the menu structure is like

    #mainMenu ul {
        display:block
    }
       <ul id="mainMenu">
          <li>Weblog</li>
          <li>Articles
             <ul>
                <li>Red Fox</li>
                <li id="selectedNode" >Pitching Inning                  <<<< This item is the one that relates to the current page
                   <ul>
                      <li>Part I</li>
                      <li>Part II</li>
                   </ul>
                </li>
                <li>That Long</li>
             </ul>
          </li>
          <li>About</li>
          <li>Cars
             <ul>
                <li>Holden</li>
                <li>Ford</li>
             </ul>          
          </li>
       </ul>

At the moment its default view would look like            
    - Weblog
    - Articles
    - About
    - Cars


But with the way i hope i can get this inheritance to work its like the following were all i have to do is give red fox and id of selectedNode
    - Weblog
    - Articles
          - Red Fox
          - Pitching Inning
    - About
    - Cars

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Asked On
2005-11-28 at 17:39:45ID21645791
Tags

child

,

parent

,

from

,

inherit

Topic

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: kibatsuPosted on 2005-11-28 at 18:36:12ID: 15377226

G'day,

You're describing 'Parent selectors', a really nice trick, but one that isn't currently supported by any browser. I think it was being considered for the CSS3 spec, but I don't know whether it made it in or not.

You'll have to do some scripting in order to make this work - either server side (apply the ID to the top-level parent of the selected item) or client side with JS (find the #selectedNode, loop up through the parents to find the top level, and shift the ID there.

Sorry this isn't better news! Let us know if you need more help on either of the workarounds. Good luck!

 

by: CVSmarcPosted on 2005-11-28 at 20:16:16ID: 15377601

Thanks for the info
I was really hoping that there would be a way of doing it without having to use scripting. In this particular case if there is no css solution, it would have to be JavaScript, as i am generating the menu from the database on the server and i only want to generate the menu once per user session. The problem comes and the reason why i dint want to use JavaScript is because there would be a transition period between when the user sees the menu compressed and when they see it opened. If i were able to use CSS this wouldn't be a problem because the menu would be in its opened state when it was published to the page and thus there wouldn't be any resizing after the page had loaded.
Thanks again
ant

 

by: kibatsuPosted on 2005-12-01 at 16:30:04ID: 15401577

Just a thought,

Unless you know for sure that your users are Javascript enabled, you should probably have the menu expanded by default, and use JS to collapse it. Otherwise non-JS users aren't ever going to see the menu.

I agree, a CSS only solution would be ideal - you might just have to wait a couple of years to be able to use it.

I had the thought that you could use a combination of 'overflow' and 'display:block' rules to push open the parent menus - I've not thought it through and I doubt it would produce a really nice robust result, but it might be worth experimenting with.

Good luck!

 

by: CVSmarcPosted on 2006-01-26 at 14:25:23ID: 15800250

Very Sorry kibatsu for the late response
In the end what i will do is as you have surgested and have it opened by default and close it useing js.
sorry again and thanks for the info again.
ant

 

by: kibatsuPosted on 2006-01-26 at 19:42:06ID: 15802027

No worries mate - glad I was able to help!

Good luck!

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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