Masatoshi Nishiguchi

Modal dialog with pure CSS

I wanted to make the site navigation appear on a modal dialog box. After googling around, I found that I could implement modal with pure CSS. I thought this was a great opportunity to learn how to implement simple modal without JS.

Objectives

Analysis

Advantages

Disadvantages

Solutions to above-mentioned disadvantages

At first, I was trying to prevent the page from scrolling when the modal is open. And because I wanted to stick to the pure CSS implementation, it was very challenging to do it. In fact, as of now I do not know how to stop the page from scrolling without JS.

Then after doing experiments by trail and error, I came up with these two solutions:

I realized that the simplest solution for the problem of the page scrolling was to simply not use transparent background color because if it is invisible, we do not care even if it is actually scrolling.

Implementation

HTML

The anchor link to #open-navigation is used to trigger the modal to open.

<a href="#open-navigation" title="Open" class="hamburger">
  &#8801
</a>

<nav id="open-navigation">
  <a href="#" title="Close" class="close-modal">
    &#x2715;
  </a>
  <ul id="nav-menu">
    <li class="nav-item active">
      <a>Home</a>
    </li>
    <li class="nav-item">
      <a href="/about">About</a>
    </li>
    <li class="nav-item">
      <a href="/blog/">Blog</a>
    </li>
    <li class="nav-item">
      <a href="/projects">Projects</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</nav>

SCSS

I trigger the opening/closing of the modal by using an anchor link and the CSS pseudo selector :target. When the hamburger that is lined to #open-navigation is clicked, the browser targets the element with that ID and gives that element the :target pseudo selector. Taking advantage of that, I can switch the modal by the presence of the :target pseudo selector on the modal container element.

@mixin modal {
  opacity: 0; // Hidden by default
  pointer-events: none; // Disable mouse/touch events by default
  position: fixed;
  top: 0; right: 0; bottom: 0; left: 0;
  z-index: 10; // Sit on top of contents
  width: 100vw; // Full width
  height: 100vh; // Full height
  background: $black;
  &:target { // This is triggered by an anchor hash link to this element.
    opacity: 1;
    pointer-events: auto;  // Enable mouse/touch events.
  }
}
@mixin modal-dialog {
  position: absolute;
  top: 0; right: 0; bottom: 0; left: 0;
  z-index: 11;
  display: block;
  width: 80%;
  height: 77%;
  padding: 0;
  margin: auto;
  background: $black;
}

.hamburger {
  position: absolute;
  top: 16px; right: 10px;
  z-index: 3;
  display: inline-block;
  background: none;
  color: #777;
  border: 1px solid #777;
  width: 44px;
  height: 44px;
  line-height: 44px;
  text-align: center;
  cursor: pointer;
  &:hover {
    text-decoration: none;
  }
  // Hide it when larger than iPad.
  @media only screen and (min-width : 768px) {
    display: none;
  }
}
.close-modal {
  @extend .hamburger;
  z-index: 12;
}

// Mobile devices: The Modal (background)
nav {
  @include modal;
  ul {
    @include modal-dialog;
    li {
      display: block;
      height: 56px;
      line-height: 56px;
      color: #777;
      background: white;
      a {
        display: block;
        color: #555;
        background: white;
        padding: 0 .8rem;
        width: 100%;
        height: 56px;
        line-height: 56px;
      }
      &.active a{
        color: #ccc;
        background: #eee;
        text-decoration: none;
        cursor: default;  // Use default cursor instead of the finger pointer.
      }
    }
  }
}

// Prevent BODY from scrolling when a modal is opened
body.modal-is-open {
  position: fixed;
  overflow: hidden;
}

JavaScript (optional)

If I really have to prevent the page from scrolling, I could do it with JavaScript; however if I do so, maybe I might as well trigger the modal opening/closing by toggling the modal-is-open class in the first place.

Disabling the scroll with JavaScript can be complex because there are several possible scenarios where we want to re-configure the ability of scrolling on and off appropriately (For example, screen rotation, screen resize and browser refresh). Because of that, the code can become buggy or difficult to maintain.

( function() {
  // Wait until DOM is loaded and then execute.
  document.addEventListener( "DOMContentLoaded", function( event ) {

    // Check the initial state.
    toggleModal();

    // Keep watch on hash change due to back buttoon or history.
    window.addEventListener( "hashchange", toggleModal );

    // Keep watch on page refresh.
    window.addEventListener( "load", toggleModal );

    // Keep watch on screen rotation or resize.
    window.addEventListener( 'resize', toggleModal );


    /**
     * Toggle the ".modal-is-open" class on document.body checking whether the nav
     * is targeted of not.
     */
    function toggleModal() {
      if ( document.querySelector( "nav:target" ) ) {
        document.body.classList.add( "modal-is-open" );
      } else {
        document.body.classList.remove( "modal-is-open" );
      }
    }
  });
})();

Conclusion

Reference