I've always been taken with the way that the BBC styles their A-Z index using a simple list and CSS. However, because they use pixels to set the dimensions of each list item, the design breaks when you increase the text size.

Consequently, I thought I'd have a go at creating an A to Z index along the same lines that doesn't break when you resize your text.

The code is pretty straight forward. Here's the CSS:

#azindex {
	background: #75B9D0;
	float: left;
	margin: 5px 0 20px 10px;
	padding: 0px 5px 15px 5px;
	width: 520px;
}

 * html #azindex {
	padding: 5px 5px 10px 5px;
	width: 490px;
}
	
#index {
	font: bold 100% Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
}	
	
#index li {
	float: left;
	height: 2em;
	list-style-type: none;
	margin: 0.65em 0.3em;
	padding: 0;
	width: 3em;
}

 * html #index li {
	margin: 0.2em 0.2em;
}

#index a:link, #index a:visited {
	background: #fff;
	color: navy;
	display: block;
	height: 2em;
	padding: 0.75em 0 0 0;
	text-align: center;
	text-decoration: none;
	width: 3em;
}

#index a:hover {
	background: #93D1E4;
	color: #fff;
	text-decoration: underline;
}

And here's the HTML:

<div id="azindex">      
<ul id="index">
<li><a href="#a">A</a></li>
<li><a href="#b">B</a></li>
<li><a href="#c">C</a></li>
<li><a href="#">etc</a></li>
<li><a href="#z">Z</a></li>
</ul>
</div>

Pretty simple, but hopefully it'll be useful to someone.

Posted on: January 16, 2006 | 5 Comments

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