How do I make the hovered element to be active

Question

How do I make the hovered element to stay. As you can see in the codepen if I hover over the "Service" it shows the content but when I try to click on the content it disappears.

index.html

.list {
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  width: 100px;
}
.list .item {
  padding: 10px;
  font-size: 24px;
  font-weight: normal;
  background-color: #ccc;
  cursor: pointer;
}
.list .item:hover {
  text-decoration: underline;
}
.list .item.item-dropdown {
  position: relative;
}
.list .item.item-dropdown:hover .dropdown-content {
  display: block;
}
.list .dropdown-content {
  display: none;
  position: absolute;
  left: 120px;
  bottom: -20px;
  padding: 5px 20px;
  background-color: #ccc;
}
.list .dropdown-content:before {
  content: "";
  position: absolute;
  width: 0;
  height: 0;
  border-top: 17px solid transparent;
  border-right: 14px solid #ccc;
  border-bottom: 17px solid transparent;
  margin-left: -8px;
  top: 45%;
  left: -5%;
}

<div class="list">
  <div class="item">Home</div>
  <div class="item">About</div>
  <div class="item item-dropdown">Services
    <div class="dropdown-content">
      <div class="item">Home</div>
      <div class="item">About</div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

Note: I also see that sometimes its working and sometimes it doesn't when you hover over from the beak it works but when trying hover over outside beak it doesn't.

Answer 1

One way to achieve this is to wrap your menu items inside an element with margin-left.

.list {
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  width: 100px;
}
.list .item {
  padding: 10px;
  font-size: 24px;
  font-weight: normal;
  background-color: #ccc;
  cursor: pointer;
}
.list .item:hover {
  text-decoration: underline;
}
.list .item.item-dropdown {
  position: relative;
}
.list .item.item-dropdown:hover .dropdown-content {
  display: block;
}
.list .dropdown-content {
  display: none;
  position: absolute;
  left: 100px;
  bottom: -20px;
}
.list .dd-menu{
  position:relative;
  margin-left:20px;
  background-color: #ccc;
  padding: 5px 20px;
}
.list .dd-menu:before {
  content: "";
  position: absolute;
  width: 0;
  height: 0;
  border-top: 17px solid transparent;
  border-right: 14px solid #ccc;
  border-bottom: 17px solid transparent;
  margin-left: -8px;
  top: 45%;
  left: -5%;
}

<div class="list">
  <div class="item">Home</div>
  <div class="item">About</div>
  <div class="item item-dropdown">Services
    <div class="dropdown-content">
      <div class="dd-menu">
        <div class="item">Home</div>
        <div class="item">About</div>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

Immediate absolute positioned child shouldn't have any margin before it to make hover possible.