Menu - background image and hover action

Question

I have a menu and jquery-code, which makes its background-image different when hover.

       $('#menu a').hover(function() {
            $(this).css( 'background', 'url(images/slider_bg_hover.png) repeat-x' );                     
       },function(){
            $(this).css( 'background', 'url(images/slider_bg.png) repeat-x' );
       });

It works fine, but now I want to highlight clicked menu:

$('#menu a').click(function() {
   $(this).css( 'background', 'url(images/slider_bg_hover.png) repeat-x' );
});

It works fine too, but after clicking I move my mouse-pointer from menu-area and hover-action calls! So that part of menu is unhiglighted!

What can u advice me?

Answer 1

Rather than setting individual css attributes, consider using classes instead.

Your example would require three css classes (two of which have the same definition)

.menu{
    background: url(images/slider_bg.png) repeat-x;
}

.hoverMenu, .selectedMenu{
    background: url(images/slider_bg_hover.png) repeat-x;
}


$('#menu a').hover(function() {
        $(this).addClass('menu');                     
   },function(){
        $(this).addClass( 'hoverMenu' );
   });

$('#menu a').click(function() {
   $('#menu a').removeClass( 'selectedMenu' );
   $(this).addClass('selectedMenu');
});

When an element has two classes that conflict with each other, I think that the one which comes last, in the CSS definitions, is the one that takes effect. It's a bit late at night for me to check this, but you can swap the classes around to see which way works best..