Question

I’m making a simple drop down menu that I’m using JavaScript to show and hide. The menu shows, and the links work still, but when I hover past the first link to drop down, the whole drop down menu goes away, even though I set a specific height for it. I also have a separate div with content below it, and the text in that div gets pushed out of the way, though I thought z-index would fix that.

function showDrop() {
  document.getElementById("dropdown").style.visibility = "visible";
}

function hideDrop() {
  document.getElementById("dropdown").style.visibility = "hidden";
}

#nav {
  /* margin-left: 550px;
  padding-top: 110px; */
  font-family: 'Averia Serif Libre', cursive;
  font-size: 24px;
  position: relative;
}

#nav ul li {
  display: block;
  float: left;
  margin-right: 10px;
}

#nav ul li a:link,
#nav ul li a:visited {
  text-decoration: none;
  float: left;
}

#nav ul li a:hover,
#nav ul li a:active {
  color: #00B2EE;
}

#nav ul li ul {
  visibility: hidden;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
  display: block;
  width: 100px;
  height: 100px;
  clear: both;
  z-index: 2;
  padding-top: 2px;
}

#nav ul li ul li {
  width: 100px;
  z-index: inherit;
  background-color: #AAA;
  font-size: 16px;
  line-height: 22px;
}

<div id="nav">
  <ul>
    <li><a href="#" id="nAbout">About</a></li>
    <li><a href="#" id="nPortfolio" onMouseOver="showDrop();">Portfolio</a>
      <ul id="dropdown" onMouseOut="hideDrop();">
        <li><a href="#">Print Design</a></li>
        <li><a href="#">Web Design</a></li>
        <li><a href="#">Illustration</a></li>
      </ul>
    </li>
    <li><a href="#" id="nContact">Contact</a></li>
    <li><a href="#" id="nBlog">Blog</a></li>
  </ul>
</div>

Answer 1

Use the onmouseleave event instead, because onmouseout considers the mouse to be ‘out’ even if you’re hovering children of the element. Sample code:

$("#dropdown").mouseleave(function() { //jQuery required; onmouseleave is IE-specific
    hideDrop();
});

Hope that helped.