Tutorials

Facebook Style Footer Admin Panel Part 1

Tags: Intermediate, Widgets

The popularity of social media has been booming in the past few years and Facebook definitely has climbed high to the top of the social network rankings. Facebook has many Ajax driven features and applications that are very impressive, and one of the things I particularly like is the footer admin panel, where it neatly organizes frequently used links and applications.

This week I would like to cover part 1 of how to recreate the Facebook footer admin panel with CSS and jQuery.

Step 1. Wireframe and Tooltip Bubbles – HTML & CSS

Lay out the wireframe of the admin panel using an unordered list for the foundation. The last two list items (Alert Panel & Chat Panel) will have sub-panels nested within them. Since these two panels will float to the right, the order in the markup will be reversed.

Notice that there is a <small> tag nested within the <a> tag, this is how we will achieve our tooltip bubble on the navigation.

HTML

<div id="footpanel">
    <ul id="mainpanel">
        <li><a href="#" class="home">Inspiration <small>Design Bombs</small></a></li>
        <li><a href="#" class="profile">View Profile <small>View Profile</small></a></li>
        <li><a href="#" class="editprofile">Edit Profile <small>Edit Profile</small></a></li>
        <li><a href="#" class="contacts">Contacts <small>Contacts</small></a></li>
        <li><a href="#" class="messages">Messages (10) <small>Messages</small></a></li>
        <li><a href="#" class="playlist">Play List <small>Play List</small></a></li>
        <li><a href="#" class="videos">Videos <small>Videos</small></a></li>
        <li id="alertpanel"><a href="#" class="alerts">Alerts</a></li>
        <li id="chatpanel"><a href="#" class="chat">Friends (<strong>18</strong>)</a></li>
    </ul>
</div>

CSS

First start by fixing the panel to the bottom of the viewport.

#footpanel {
	position: fixed;
	bottom: 0; left: 0;
	z-index: 9999; /*--Keeps the panel on top of all other elements--*/
	background: #e3e2e2;
	border: 1px solid #c3c3c3;
	border-bottom: none;
	width: 94%;
	margin: 0 3%;
}

As you may already know, IE6 does not understand fixed positioning. I stumbled across a tutorial that fixed this problem*.

*html #footpanel { /*--IE6 Hack - Fixed Positioning to the Bottom--*/
	margin-top: -1px; /*--Prevents IE6 from having an infinity scroll bar - due to 1px border on #footpanel--*/
	position: absolute;
	top:expression(eval(document.compatMode &&document.compatMode=='CSS1Compat') ?documentElement.scrollTop+(documentElement.clientHeight-this.clientHeight) : document.body.scrollTop +(document.body.clientHeight-this.clientHeight));
}

*Note: Due to heavy loading on the browser, an alternative solution would be to either use an position: absolute; or if the situation/client allows it use display: none; for those with IE6.

Style the unordered list which will be the foundation of this panel.

#footpanel ul {
	padding: 0; margin: 0;
	float: left;
	width: 100%;
	list-style: none;
	border-top: 1px solid #fff; /*--Gives the bevel feel on the panel--*/
	font-size: 1.1em;
}
#footpanel ul li{
	padding: 0; margin: 0;
	float: left;
	position: relative;
}
#footpanel ul li a{
	padding: 5px;
	float: left;
	text-indent: -9999px; /*--For text replacement - Shove text off of the page--*/
	height: 16px; width: 16px;
	text-decoration: none;
	color: #333;
	position: relative;
}
html #footpanel ul li a:hover{	background-color: #fff; }
html #footpanel ul li a.active { /*--Active state when sub-panel is open--*/
	background-color: #fff;
	height: 17px;
	margin-top: -2px; /*--Push it up 2px to attach the active button to sub-panel--*/
	border: 1px solid #555;
	border-top: none;
	z-index: 200; /*--Keeps the active link on top of the sub-panel--*/
	position: relative;
}

Declare the text replacement for each link.
You can download these great icons by Pinvoke here.

#footpanel a.home{
	background: url(home.png) no-repeat 15px center;
	width: 50px;
	padding-left: 40px;
	border-right: 1px solid #bbb;
	text-indent: 0; /*--Reset text indent since there will be a combination of both text and image--*/
}
a.profile{ background: url(user.png) no-repeat center center;  }
a.editprofile{ background: url(wrench_screwdriver.png) no-repeat center center; }
a.contacts{ background: url(address_book.png) no-repeat center center; }
a.messages{ background: url(mail.png) no-repeat center center; }
a.playlist{ background: url(document_music_playlist.png) no-repeat center center; }
a.videos{ background: url(film.png) no-repeat center center; }
a.alerts{ background: url(newspaper.png) no-repeat center center; }
#footpanel a.chat{
	background: url(balloon.png) no-repeat 15px center;
	width: 126px;
	border-left: 1px solid #bbb;
	border-right: 1px solid #bbb;
	padding-left: 40px;
	text-indent: 0; /*--Reset text indent since there will be a combination of both text and image--*/
}
#footpanel li#chatpanel, #footpanel li#alertpanel {	float: right; }  /*--Right align the chat and alert panels--*/

Style the tooltip bubble, by default the <small> tag will be hidden with a display:none;. On hover over, allow the tooltip to appear with a display:block;

#footpanel a small {
	text-align: center;
	width: 70px;
	background: url(pop_arrow.gif) no-repeat center bottom;
	padding: 5px 5px 11px;
	display: none; /*--Hide by default--*/
	color: #fff;
	font-size: 1em;
	text-indent: 0;
}
#footpanel a:hover small{
	display: block; /*--Show on hover--*/
	position: absolute;
	top: -35px; /*--Position tooltip 35px above the list item--*/
	left: 50%;
	margin-left: -40px; /*--Center the tooltip--*/
	z-index: 9999;
}

What’s Next?

Part 2 of this tutorial will go over how to style the sub-panels and how to activate them using jQuery. If anyone had any questions or comments regarding the tooltip technique, please let me know!