Gaurav

Posted on Mar 13, 2021

Let's build a responsive navbar and hamburger menu using HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

#css #javascript #beginners #tutorial

Hello everyone! In this tutorial lets build a responsive navbar and hamburger menu using html,css and a little bit of javascript.

This is how it will look,

Github link :

dev-ggaurav / responsive-hamburger-tutorial

So let's start with the HTML,

<header class="header">
        <nav class="navbar">
            <a href="#" class="nav-logo">WebDev.</a>
            <ul class="nav-menu">
                <li class="nav-item">
                    <a href="#" class="nav-link">Services</a>
                </li>
                <li class="nav-item">
                    <a href="#" class="nav-link">Blog</a>
                </li>
                <li class="nav-item">
                    <a href="#" class="nav-link">About</a>
                </li>
                <li class="nav-item">
                    <a href="#" class="nav-link">Contact</a>
                </li>
            </ul>
            <div class="hamburger">
                <span class="bar"></span>
                <span class="bar"></span>
                <span class="bar"></span>
            </div>
        </nav>
</header>

Here, we have

header with the class of header which work as a container of our navbar
nav with the class of navbar
a link with the class of nav-logo
ul with the class of nav-menu
inside the ul we have 4 lis with the class of nav-item
inside each nav-item we have a link with the class of nav-link
for our hamburger I have added a div with the class of hamburger and inside which we have 3 spans with the class of bar

So this is the HTML that we need.

Now let's add the CSS reset

(Here we will import the font we need and add some basic CSS to reset all the default styles.

@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Roboto:ital,wght@0,500;1,400&display=swap');

* {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    box-sizing: border-box;
}

html {
    font-size: 62.5%;
    font-family: 'Roboto', sans-serif;
}

li {
    list-style: none;
}

a {
    text-decoration: none;
}

Now let's add styles to the elements one by one,

header and navbar

.header{
    border-bottom: 1px solid #E2E8F0;
}

.navbar {
    display: flex;
    justify-content: space-between;
    align-items: center;
    padding: 1rem 1.5rem;
}

hamburger styles

.hamburger {
    display: none;
}

.bar {
    display: block;
    width: 25px;
    height: 3px;
    margin: 5px auto;
    -webkit-transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out;
    transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out;
    background-color: #101010;
}

basic styles for our other elements

.nav-menu {
    display: flex;
    justify-content: space-between;
    align-items: center;
}

.nav-item {
    margin-left: 5rem;
}

.nav-link{
    font-size: 1.6rem;
    font-weight: 400;
    color: #475569;
}

.nav-link:hover{
    color: #482ff7;
}

.nav-logo {
    font-size: 2.1rem;
    font-weight: 500;
    color: #482ff7;
}

After this, It should look like this,

But It's not responsive yet, so let's add the media queries.

@media only screen and (max-width: 768px) {
    .nav-menu {
        position: fixed;
        left: -100%;
        top: 5rem;
        flex-direction: column;
        background-color: #fff;
        width: 100%;
        border-radius: 10px;
        text-align: center;
        transition: 0.3s;
        box-shadow:
            0 10px 27px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.05);
    }

    .nav-menu.active {
        left: 0;
    }

    .nav-item {
        margin: 2.5rem 0;
    }

    .hamburger {
        display: block;
        cursor: pointer;
    }

}

What this media query does is, hides our nav-menu by setting position: fixed; left: -100%; on it.
Also, we set our hamburger to display: block; so it's visible now.
We have also added an extra class that is .nav-menu.active which sets left: 0; on the nav-menu. Now we will have to add the javascript which will add this active class on the nav-menu when we click our hamburger.

Let's add the javascript.

const hamburger = document.querySelector(".hamburger");
const navMenu = document.querySelector(".nav-menu");

hamburger.addEventListener("click", mobileMenu);

function mobileMenu() {
    hamburger.classList.toggle("active");
    navMenu.classList.toggle("active");
}

Here the function mobileMenu() also adds an active class on our hamburger and our nav-menu which makes our mobile menu open. we can use the active class on the hamburger to create that X animation when we click on the hamburger. so let's do that now.

// Inside the Media Query.

    .hamburger.active .bar:nth-child(2) {
        opacity: 0;
    }

    .hamburger.active .bar:nth-child(1) {
        transform: translateY(8px) rotate(45deg);
    }

    .hamburger.active .bar:nth-child(3) {
        transform: translateY(-8px) rotate(-45deg);
    }

It should look like this now,

But there is a catch, the hamburger menu doesn't close when we click a link. So let's add that now,

const navLink = document.querySelectorAll(".nav-link");

navLink.forEach(n => n.addEventListener("click", closeMenu));

function closeMenu() {
    hamburger.classList.remove("active");
    navMenu.classList.remove("active");
}

The closeMenu() function removes the active class from both the nav-menu and the hamburger which makes our mobile menu close.

So that's it guys we built a responsive navbar and hamburger menu with HTML CSS and javascript. Hope u liked it. Share this article. Thank you 😀

Top comments (62)

Angelique • Mar 16 '21

This is a great start, but does not resolve anything about the accessibility of this menu. Two immediate things to fix would be to make the hamburger menu itself a button element (which would make it clear that it's interactive) and to add some text that labels the button in some way (which would make it meaningful to a screen reader user). 👍🏻

See these examples for more detail and other fixes:

Gaurav • Mar 16 '21

Thank u so much for the feedback and suggestions! Appreciate it. And i will surely fix it and implement your suggestions 😊

Nico Zerpa (he/him) • Mar 20 '21

Thank you for sharing!
There's a way to do it without using JavaScript, handling the menu visibility with CSS.

If you add a <div> containing only the hamburger button and the menu, you can use the :focus-within CSS pseudo-selector. :focus-within applies to an element if it has the focus, but also if one of its children is focused.

For example, if you write the HTML for the menu like this:

<div class="menu-container">
  <button type="button" class="hamburger">Menu</button>
  <nav class="navbar">...</nav>
</div>

You can use the :focus-within selector like this:

.menu-container .navbar {
  display: none;
}
.menu-container:focus-within .navbar {
  display: block;
}

Now, the <nav class="navbar"> will initially remain hidden, but it will appear when any child of <div class="menu-container"> is focused. For example, when you click on the hamburger button or some of the menu items.

Angelika Jarosz • Jul 14 '21

This is a cool solution i just tried out in my own code! Thanks for sharing! The only downside is once the menu is open, you have to click outside the hamburger to close it which from a user experience perspective could confuse a user for a second/ make them think your site has a bug. Unless you also have a work around to this that i am missing.

Gaurav • Mar 20 '21

Hey thank u so much for sharing this man! Will try this

RyanStotler • Nov 5 '21

This works great in codepen, I am trying to get the js to work and I am getting:
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading 'addEventListener')
at site.js:165
from:
hamburger.addEventListener("click", mobileMenu);
Do you know how to resolve this property null in the javascript file?
Appreciate your help in advance

Ian Cahn • Nov 6 '21

Hey Ryan, I had this exact same issue, so Im gonna go ahead and guess you are using Chrome. Chrome has issues when using JS in localhost environment. To fix this, just move your js script tag to your footer, instead of your header. This fixed it for me, strange but hey...

Steve Richmond • Dec 18 '21

Another solution is to add the 'defer' attribute to the script element.

Claudio Barca • Mar 13 '21

Nice, thanks.

Gaurav • Mar 14 '21

Thank u!

kritikaramesh • Mar 27 '21

Great explanation was helpful ! 👍🏽

Gaurav • Mar 28 '21

Thank u !

Khushboo Chaturvedi • Nov 30 '21

Great explanation! Helped a lot!

Kiruthiga K • Jan 20 '22 • Edited

It was really helpful. The javascript code was easy to understand. As a beginner in javascript, I was really able to understand it without any help. I was even able to tweak it and modify it according to my wish.