Remote linking with a twist
View DemoRecently, I came across a scenario where a client wanted a list of links which would link to certain areas of the site. Additionally, they wanted to add a roll-over effect, where an image would change depending what link the mouse was hovering over. Without giving it a thought, I initially began to write some jQuery to do the trick, which would have been fine; but then I came across Chris Coyier’s remote linking article, and thought that I could build upon this to provide me with a CSS only solution.
There isn’t too much to this: it makes use of positioning and z-index to achieve this. Firstly we have the mark-up, which basically embeds each image, with the link text inside the anchor itself:
<ol>
<li>
<a id="red">Red Square
<img src="images/red_square.png" alt="Red Square" />
</a></li>
<li>
<a id="yellow">Yellow Circle
<img src="images/yellow_circle.png" alt="Yellow Square" />
</a></li>
<li>
<a id="green">Green Triangle
<img src="images/green_triangle.png" alt="Green Triangle" />
</a></li>
<li>
<a id="blue">Blue Hexagon
<img src="images/blue_hexagon.png" alt="Blue Hexagon" />
</a></li>
</ol>And the CSS, where the magic happens:
#linksWrapper ol {
list-style-type: none;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
position: relative;
}
#linksWrapper ol li {
width: 180px;
}
#linksWrapper ol li a {
text-decoration: none;
padding: 0.25em 10px;
display: block;
color: #000;
width: 160px;
}
#linksWrapper ol li a img {
position: absolute;
top: 0;
left: 180px;
z-index: 100;
border: none;
}
#linksWrapper ol li a#red img {
z-index: 500;
}
#linksWrapper ol li a#yellow:hover {
background-color: #FFFC00;
color: #000;
}
#linksWrapper ol li a#red:hover {
background-color: #FF0000;
color: #FFF;
}
#linksWrapper ol li a#green:hover {
background-color: #24EA44;
color: #FFF;
}
#linksWrapper ol li a#blue:hover {
background-color: #2B99F6;
color: #FFF;
}
#linksWrapper ol li a:hover img {
z-index: 1000;
}