Modern Sidebar Menu

#codepen #html #css #ui

As a CSS enthusiast I'm always trying to replicate designs I see using CSS.

Today I wanted to create a sidebar menu.
I used codepen as always(God Bless Codepen).

At first I added the necessary HTML I knew I wanted on the page:


<aside>
  <p> Menu </p>
  <a href="javascript:void(0)">
    <i class="fa fa-user-o" aria-hidden="true"></i>
    My drive
  </a>
  <a href="javascript:void(0)">
    <i class="fa fa-laptop" aria-hidden="true"></i>
    Computers
  </a>
  <a href="javascript:void(0)">
    <i class="fa fa-clone" aria-hidden="true"></i>
    Shared with me
  </a>
  <a href="javascript:void(0)">
    <i class="fa fa-star-o" aria-hidden="true"></i>
    Starred
  </a>
  <a href="javascript:void(0)">
    <i class="fa fa-trash-o" aria-hidden="true"></i>
    Trash
  </a>
</aside>

Now I want my sidebar to be 100vh and no margins:

body {
  font-family: 'Roboto';
  width: 100%;
  height: 100vh;
  margin: 0;
}

For the nice visuals of the sidebar:

aside {
  color: #fff;
  width: 250px;
  padding-left: 20px;
  height: 100vh;
  background-image: linear-gradient(30deg , #0048bd, #44a7fd);
  border-top-right-radius: 80px;
}

aside a {
  font-size: 12px;
  color: #fff;
  display: block;
  padding: 12px;
  padding-left: 30px;
  text-decoration: none;
}

aside a:hover {
  color: #3f5efb;
  background: #fff;
  position: relative;
  background-color: #fff;
  border-top-left-radius: 20px;
  border-bottom-left-radius: 20px;
}

aside a i {
  margin-right: 5px;
}

The most difficult effect to achieve was the hover over the menu item:

For the left top and bottom hover design i added 2 pseudo elements like this:


aside a:hover::after {
  content: "";
  position: absolute;
  background-color: transparent;
  bottom: 100%;
  right: 0;
  height: 35px;
  width: 35px;
  border-bottom-right-radius: 18px;
  box-shadow: 0 20px 0 0 #fff;
}

aside a:hover::before {
  content: "";
  position: absolute;
  background-color: transparent;
  top: 38px;
  right: 0;
  height: 35px;
  width: 35px;
  border-top-right-radius: 18px;
  box-shadow: 0 -20px 0 0 #fff;
}

There are some hardcoded values but if it works, it works! :))

Thank you for reading this article and I'm curios if you have another method to achieve the hover result.

Top comments (19)

Tinaël • Jan 3 '21

Visually appealing! However, I'd like to point out two things about it:

1) Semantically considering the HTML, you should use title tags (hX) & list tags (ul/ol & li) for your menu list. It would give a better accessibility and understanding of your menu to people with less abilities & to bots or other softwares.

2) You should avoid using JavaScript href as it is firstly considered not clean & now obsolete.

Thank you for sharing, keep up the good work!

AdithyaR-afk • Dec 31 '20

Awesome. Just want to highlight one thing because of my OCD , you may want to remove the rectangular div highlighting that happens when you clip an option