[asp.net] How to style an asp.net menu with CSS

I'm in the process of styling an asp.net menu and I'm trying to understand the meaning of the StaticSelectedStyle-CssClass and StaticHoverStyle-CssClass parameters.

My understanding is that the styles defined with these parameters are applied as CSS classes to the relevant elements, whenever needed. So I created my menu as follows:

<asp:Menu ID="NavigationMenu" DataSourceID="NavigationSiteMapDataSource" 
        StaticMenuStyle-CssClass="StaticMenuStyle"
        StaticMenuItemStyle-CssClass="StaticMenuItemStyle"
        StaticSelectedStyle-CssClass="StaticSelectedStyle"
        StaticHoverStyle-CssClass="StaticHoverStyle"
        Orientation="Horizontal" 
        MaximumDynamicDisplayLevels="0" 
        runat="server">
</asp:Menu>

It works for StaticMenuStyle-CssClass and StaticMenuStyle-CssClass (the classes are applied to the relevant elements), but StaticSelectedStyle-CssClass and StaticHoverStyle-CssClass are not applied, regardless of the selected or hover status of an element.

What am I supposed to do to make this work?

Thanks.

EDIT: Sorry I should have mentioned that this is .NET 4. Here is the generated HTML:

<div id="NavigationMenu">
 <ul class="level1 StaticMenuStyle">
  <li><a class="level1 StaticMenuItemStyle selected" href="/Link.aspx">Link</a></li>
 </ul>
</div>

So as you can see, StaticMenuStyle and StaticMenuItemStyle are applied, but not StaticSelectedStyle-CssClass or StaticHoverStyle-CssClass. Not sure why. I know I can use selected but isn't the expected behavior that StaticSelectedStyle-CssClass be applied??? By using selected I make assumptions as to what .NET does behind the scenes and that's not right.

I tried MikeTeeVee's solution, still not work, I mean the selected tab still not change and keep different color. This post solved my problem: Set CSS class 'selected' in ASP.NET menu parents and their children? Need put code in code behind.

There are well achieved third-party tools, but i usually use superfish http://www.conceptdevelopment.net/Fun/Superfish/ it's cool, free and easy ;)

I feel your pain and I wasted all night/morning trying to figure this out. With sheer brute force I figured out a solution. Call it a workaround - but it's simple.

Add the CssClass property to your Menu Control's declaration like so:

<asp:Menu ID="NavigationMenu" DataSourceID="NavigationSiteMapDataSource"
        CssClass="SomeMenuClass"
        StaticMenuStyle-CssClass="StaticMenuStyle"
        StaticMenuItemStyle-CssClass="StaticMenuItemStyle"
        Orientation="Horizontal" 
        MaximumDynamicDisplayLevels="0" 
        runat="server">
</asp:Menu>

Just rip out the StaticSelectedStyle-CssClass and StaticHoverStyle-CssClass attributes as they simply don't do jack.

Now create the "SomeMenuClass", doesn't matter what you put in it. It should look something like this:

.SomeMenuClass
{
    color:Green;
}

Next add the following two CSS Classes:

For "Hover" Styling add:

.SomeMenuClass a.static.highlighted
{
    color:Red !important;
}

For "Selected" Styling add:

.SomeMenuClass a.static.selected
{
    color:Blue !important;
}

There, that's it. You're done. Hope this saves some of you the frustration I went through. BTW: You mentioned:

I seem to be the first one to ever report on what seems to be a bug.

You also seemed to think it was a new .NET 4.0 bug. I found this: http://www.velocityreviews.com/forums/t649530-problem-with-staticselectedstyle-and-statichoverstyle.html posted back in 2008 regarding Asp.Net 2.0 . How are we the only 3 people on the planet complaining about this?

How I found the workaround (study the HTML output):

Here is the HTML output when I set StaticHoverStyle-BackColor="Red":

#NavigationMenu a.static.highlighted
{
    background-color:Red;
}

This is the HTML output when setting StaticSelectedStyle-BackColor="Blue":

#NavigationMenu a.static.selected
{
    background-color:Blue;
    text-decoration:none;
}

Therefore, the logical way to override this markup was to create classes for SomeMenuClass a.static.highlighted and SomeMenuClass a.static.selected

Special Notes:

You MUST also use "!important" on ALL the settings in these classes because the HTML output uses "#NavigationMenu", and that means any styles Asp.Net decides to throw in there for you will have inheritance priority over any other styles for the Menu Control with the ID "NavigationMenu". One thing I struggled with was padding, till I figured out Asp.Net was using "#NavigationMenu" to set the left and right padding to 15em. I tacked on "!important" to my SomeMenuClass styles and it worked.

You can try styling with LevelSubMenuStyles

            <asp:Menu ID="mainMenu" runat="server" Orientation="Horizontal" 
                StaticEnableDefaultPopOutImage="False">
                <StaticMenuStyle CssClass="test" />
                <LevelSubMenuStyles>
                    <asp:SubMenuStyle BackColor="#33CCFF" BorderColor="#FF9999" 
                        Font-Underline="False" />
                    <asp:SubMenuStyle BackColor="#FF99FF" Font-Underline="False" />
                </LevelSubMenuStyles>
                <StaticMenuItemStyle CssClass="main-nav-item" />
            </asp:Menu>

I don't know why all the answers over here are so confusing. I found a quite simpler one. Use a css class for the asp:menu, say, mainMenu and all the menu items under this will be "a tags" when rendered into HTML. So you just have to provide :hover property to those "a tags" in your CSS. See below for the example:

<asp:Menu ID="mnuMain" Orientation="Horizontal" runat="server" Font-Bold="True" Width="100%" CssClass="mainMenu">
  <Items>
    <asp:MenuItem Text="Home"></asp:MenuItem>
    <asp:MenuItem Text="About Us"></asp:MenuItem>
  </Items>
</asp:Menu>

And in the CSS, write:

.mainMenu { background:#900; }
.mainMenu a { color:#fff; }
.mainMenu a:hover { background:#c00; color:#ff9; }

I hope this helps. :)

Just want to throw something in to help people still having this problem. (for me at least) the css is showing that it puts default classes of level1, level2, and level3 on each piece of the menu(level 1 being the menu, level2 being the first dropdown, level3 being the third popout). Setting the padding in css

.level2
{
padding: 2px 2px 2px 2px;
}

does work for adding the padding to each li in the first dropdown.

The thing to look at is what HTML is being spit out by the control. In this case it puts out a table to create the menu. The hover style is set on the TD and once you select a menu item the control posts back and adds the selected style to the A tag of the link within the TD.

So you have two different items that are being manipulated here. One is a TD element and another is an A element. So, you have to make your CSS work accordingly. If I add the below CSS to a page with the menu then I get the expected behavior of the background color changing in either case. You may be doing some different CSS manipulation that may or may not apply to those elements.

<style>
    .StaticHoverStyle
    {
        background: #000000;
    }

    .StaticSelectedStyle
    {
        background: blue;
    }
</style>

I ran into the issue where the class of 'selected' wasn't being added to my menu item. Turns out that you can't have a NavigateUrl on it for whatever reason.

Once I removed the NavigateUrl it applied the 'selected' css class to the a tag and I was able to apply the background style with:

div.menu ul li a.static.selected
{
    background-color: #bfcbd6 !important;
    color: #465c71 !important;
    text-decoration: none !important;
}

The best results I had with this broken control involved not using css at all, but rather using the built-in control properties for style (DynamicMenuItemStyle-BackColor, StaticHoverStyle-Width, etc.). This is terrible practice and bloats your code, as well as forcing you to do this for every instance of the control.

This does however work.

I remember the StaticSelectedStyle-CssClass attribute used to work in ASP.NET 2.0. And in .NET 4.0 if you change the Menu control's RenderingMode attribute "Table" (thus making it render the menu as s and sub-s like it did back '05) it will at least write your specified StaticSelectedStyle-CssClass into the proper html element.

That may be enough for you page to work like you want. However my work-around for the selected menu item in ASP 4.0 (when leaving RenderingMode to its default), is to mimic the control's generated "selected" CSS class but give mine the "!important" CSS declaration so my styles take precedence where needed.

For instance by default the Menu control renders an "li" element and child "a" for each menu item and the selected menu item's "a" element will contain class="selected" (among other control generated CSS class names including "static" if its a static menu item), therefore I add my own selector to the page (or in a separate stylesheet file) for "static" and "selected" "a" tags like so:

a.selected.static
{
background-color: #f5f5f5 !important;
border-top: Red 1px solid !important;
border-left: Red 1px solid !important;
border-right: Red 1px solid !important;
}