Mobile-first responsive menu without Bootstrap

I found this useful Codrops' tutorial for creating a responsive menu that looks good in mobile, tablets and desktop. It is a very complete and includes a beautiful design, but there were a lot of things I had to change from it in order to adapt it to my needs. For example, I didn't want to use that design (I was looking for a Bootstrap Navbar-like menu, but I wanted it to be more flexible, to respond to vertical-align, etc.), I was interested in using a mobile first approach, etc. So here is a base version of a responsive mobile-first menu, so you can add your own pretty CSS to it without overwriting another person's (but remember this doesn't support < Internet Explorer 8).

Here is a jsFiddle with a demo of the complete code. I repeat, this code, including the CSS, just makes the menu functional, it's just a base code, meaning I don't add any extra styles, so you can use your own.

1. Setting up

We will be using JQuery, so make sure to get it and add it your project.

Get a CSS reset script, I always use Eric's Meyer "Reset CSS", which you can find here.

Also, remember to use the viewport meta tag inside your when working mobile-first.

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />

 

2. The menu HTML

I'll use my website's name on the left, and the navigation on the right. In my project I used an image inside the <h1> tag, but we'll keep it simple using just the name now.

<header>
    <div id="header-wrapper">
        <div id="logo-wrapper">
             <h1>My website</h1>
        </div>
        <nav id="main-nav">
            <ul>
                <li class="nav-li"><a href="#">Link 1</a></li>
                <li class="nav-li"><a href="#">Link 2</a></li>
                <li class="nav-li"><a href="#">Link 3</a></li>
                <li class="nav-li"><a href="#">Link 4</a></li>
            </ul>
        </nav>
    </div>
</header>

3. Adding the menu button for small screens

Just like in the Codrops' tutorial, I'll add the button through JavaScript to keep the HTML cleaner, but this time using JQuery:

// Adding the menu button inside a div. This div will help us align the menu to the left.
$('<div id="menu-btn-wrapper">
<button id="menu-btn">Menu</button></div>
').insertAfter('h1');

$('#menu-btn').click(function () {
    $('#main-nav').toggleClass('active');
});

4. The CSS

Following the mobile-first approach, we'll set the style for the small screen first, then overwrite them when necessary, as the screen width increases. The comments will speak for themselves.

/* Eric Meyer's Reset CSS v2.0 - http://cssreset.com */
html,body,div,span,applet,object,iframe,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,p,blockquote,pre,a,abbr,acronym,address,big,cite,code,del,dfn,em,img,ins,kbd,q,s,samp,small,strike,strong,sub,sup,tt,var,b,u,i,center,dl,dt,dd,ol,ul,li,fieldset,form,label,legend,table,caption,tbody,tfoot,thead,tr,th,td,article,aside,canvas,details,embed,figure,figcaption,footer,header,hgroup,menu,nav,output,ruby,section,summary,time,mark,audio,video{border:0;font-size:100%;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;margin:0;padding:0}article,aside,details,figcaption,figure,footer,header,hgroup,menu,nav,section{display:block}body{line-height:1}ol,ul{list-style:none}blockquote,q{quotes:none}blockquote:before,blockquote:after,q:before,q:after{content:none}table{border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:0}

/* Display the logo/website name and menu button alongside each other */
#logo-wrapper, #menu-btn-wrapper {
    display: inline-block;
    width: 50%;
}
/* Send menu button to the right */
#menu-btn-wrapper {
    text-align: right;
}
#menu-btn, #logo-wrapper h1 {
    vertical-align: middle;
}
/* Don't show the navigation links by default */
#main-nav > ul {
    max-height: 0em;
    overflow: hidden;
}
/* Unhide the navigation links when menu button is pressed */
 #main-nav.active > ul {
    max-height: 30em;
}
.nav-li {
    text-align: center;
}
/* Force links to occupy as much space as they can (the entire screen width) */
.nav-li a {
    display: block;
}

/* Overwriting CSS rules for screens wider than 34.688em (555px) */
@media (min-width: 34.688em) {
    /* Hide menu button */
    #menu-btn-wrapper {
        display: none;
    }
    /* Show navigation links by default */
    #main-nav > ul {
        max-height: 30em;
    }
    /* Display links in two columns */
    .nav-li {
        width: 50%;
        float: left;
        display: inline-block;
    }
}

/* Overwriting CSS rules for screens wider than 48.125em (770px) */
@media (min-width: 48.125em) {
    /* Display the entire navigation bar and the logo alongside eacth other, like we did with the menu button */
    #main-nav {
        display: inline-block;
        width: 50%;
        margin-left: -5px;
        text-align: right;
    }
    .nav-li {
        float: none;
        width: auto;
    }
}