ljc-dev

Posted on Jul 26, 2020 • Updated on Oct 1, 2021

Easy hamburger menu with JS - Beginners

#javascript #codenewbie #css #tutorial

A hamburger menu is a classic UI feature present in countless websites. It's used to show and hide a menu on click, especially used in mobile design.

In this tutorial, we'll learn to create a hamburger menu with HTML, CSS and Javascript.

Here's the HTML:



<head>
  <!-- Material Icon CDN -->
  <link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/icon?family=Material+Icons" rel="stylesheet">
</head>
<body>
  <ul class="menu">
    <li><a class="menuItem" href="#">Home</a></li>
    <li><a class="menuItem" href="#">Profile</a></li>
    <li><a class="menuItem" href="#">About</a></li>
    <li><a class="menuItem" href="#">Contacts</a></li>
  </ul>
  <button class="hamburger">
    <!-- material icons https://material.io/resources/icons/ -->
    <i class="menuIcon material-icons">menu</i>
    <i class="closeIcon material-icons">close</i>
  </button>
</body>

Begin by adding a basic menu with a class of menu and menu links with a class of menuItem.

Then add a button with a class of hamburger and both a menu and a close icons inside of it. Later on we will hide the close icon by default with CSS and alternate which icon to show with Javascript.

You can use any icons family you want. I've used material icons by loading their CDN in the head and adding the menu and close icons inside of the button.

The menuIcon and closeIcon classes are used to reference the icons in CSS and Javascript later on.

Now let's add some CSS.

Add to the button position: fixed; so scrolling won't affect it. And z-index:100; to make sure it stays above every other element.

Add top and right with a value of 1rem to place it at the top-right corner of the screen.



.hamburger {
  position: fixed;
  z-index: 100;
  top: 1rem;
  right: 1rem;
  padding: 4px;
  border: black solid 1px;
  background: white;
  cursor: pointer;
}

To hide the close icon by default, add display: none; to the closeIcon class.


 css
.closeIcon {
  display: none;
}

In the menu class, add position: fixed; so it can't be scrolled away.

Set the top, right, bottom and left to 0 to make the menu cover the whole screen.



.menu {
  position: fixed;
  transform: translateY(-100%);
  transition: transform 0.2s;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
  right: 0;
  bottom: 0;
  z-index: 99;
  background: black;
  color: white;
  list-style: none;
  padding-top: 4rem;
}

transform: translateY(-100%); is used to hide the menu by default above the screen.
transition: transform 0.2s; is optional. It is used to animate the change in translation value to create a slide up/down effect.

By resetting translateY to 0, the menu will slide down and cover the whole screen.

Add it in a showMenu class:



.showMenu {
  transform: translateY(0);
}

This class will be added and removed from the menu with Javascript to show and hide the menu.

Here's the Javascript for toggling the menu:


 javascript
const menu = document.querySelector(".menu");
const menuItems = document.querySelectorAll(".menuItem");
const hamburger= document.querySelector(".hamburger");
const closeIcon= document.querySelector(".closeIcon");
const menuIcon = document.querySelector(".menuIcon");

function toggleMenu() {
  if (menu.classList.contains("showMenu")) {
    menu.classList.remove("showMenu");
    closeIcon.style.display = "none";
    menuIcon.style.display = "block";
  } else {
    menu.classList.add("showMenu");
    closeIcon.style.display = "block";
    menuIcon.style.display = "none";
  }
}

hamburger.addEventListener("click", toggleMenu);

Clicking on the hamburger button will call toggleMenu().

It checks if the menu contains the class showMenu.

If the menu contains the showMenu class, we remove it to hide the menu. We also toggle the display to hide the close icon and show the menu icon.

If the menu doesn't have the showMenu class, we add it, show the close icon and hide the menu icon.

The hardest part is over! All that's left is to hide the menu when the user click on the links.

In the Javascript above, we got all the menu items with querySelectorAll.


 javascript
const menuItems = document.querySelectorAll(".menuItem");

With forEach, we can iterate through each link and add a call to toggleMenu().

toggleMenu() will in turn hide the menu (because if the user can click on the menu items it means that the menu is showing).



 javascript

menuItems.forEach( 

  function(menuItem) { 

    menuItem.addEventListener("click", toggleMenu);

  }

)

And that's it!

Thanks for reading 😄!!

(2nd rewrite 01/10/21)
I hope you've found it useful and happy coding 👨‍💻!

Top comments (23)

studmuffin30 • Sep 1 '20 • Edited

nice article,merci

ljc-dev • Sep 2 '20

Thx Stud 😄, glad u like it!

Lathryx • Nov 19 '20

Hey! I can't get it working and I'm not really sure why.

The CSS properties are successfully being toggled because the button switches images correctly, and the event listeners are set up correctly because if I put a console.log statement in them that also works.

Does anybody know why?

dzopunk • Nov 7 '21

I had the same problem.
I'm really not sure why. Tutorial is pretty straight forward.
My solution was creating new class with translateY(-100%) and transition property and adding it on .menu and toggle it in js.

I really wish someone replied to you sooner because I lost so much time 🤣

ahmadullah • Feb 7 '21

Thanks,
I want to create navigation drawer like dev.to's
Because when I click outside of the drawer it disappears.
Can anyone suggest me any solution.

ljc-dev • Feb 7 '21

Thanks for reading Ahmadullah!! I've recreated this ham menu to make it similar to dev.to's.
codepen.io/ljc-dev/pen/zYoqbrN

ahmadullah • Feb 8 '21

Thanks a lot.
I was searching for this solution but I couldn't find it.
if you have any problem then let me know.
Thanks.

ljc-dev • Feb 8 '21

U're welcome and thx for the offer 😉. I'm currently getting ready to start freelancing. Building projects and going to re design my portfolio 👌.

Lathryx • Nov 19 '20 • Edited

testing bug with inline code.

Edit: Could not reproduce...

ljc-dev • Nov 24 '20

Hey Lathryx, thx for checking my tutorial. I tried my best, but it isn't perfect 😄. If u want explanations on sth, u can find me on twitter 👌.

ljc-dev • Nov 24 '20

Or ask here. But I meant I'm more present on twitter.

andresfjobs • Nov 5 '20

great article man, I appreciated it a lot

ljc-dev • Nov 15 '20

Thx a lot Andres, glad u found it useful 😁!!

Brian Gay • Mar 4 '21

Any ideas on how to disable the menu from appearing out by default when navigating back to the page?

ljc-dev • Oct 1 '21

Hello Brian, sorry about that delay. I've tried adding an about page and going to and back, the menu didn't stay open 🤔. If you are still having this trouble, I could have a look at your code 👌.

Ben Johnson • May 9 '23

Thanks for the article! Saved me on a project that I was doing on my own a little ahead of my current knowledge. A quick note: I ended up using .replace instead of .add/.remove -- a little cleaner and particularly handy for wiping any CSS styles that you might want to completely hide/show when you trigger the toggle.