IE z-index relative/absolute bug in list

Question

I have the following navigation where .topNav has position:relative and subnav has position:absolute. I cant get the sublist to appear over the main list due to z-index problems. This seems to be a known problem.

<ul>
<li class="topNav">About Us
<ul class="subNav"><li> Subsection A</li><li>Subsection B</li></ul>
</li>
</ul>

Does anyone know of a workaround?

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UPDATE http://brh.numbera.com/experiments/ie7_tests/zindex.html shows exacly the problem I have. My original posting was in the context of a list but I have reduced the problem to the fact that z-index dosn't seem to work when have an element with position:absolute inside a parent element with position:relative

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Answer 1

I had the same issue and was able to fix it In IE6 and 7. Combining http://code.google.com/p/ie7-js/ with the following CSS the issue went away. With my issue I had some items inside a list floated left and had a tooltip that popped up whenever the user hovered over the li. To fix it, I adde this:

.ul li:hover {position:relative;z-index:4;} .ul li:hover + li {position:relative;z-index:3;}

The way it works is whenever the user hovers over the first LI for example, it sets the second LI floated next to it to a lower z-index value. You can of course change the z-index values to fit your own needs.

Answer 2

Stu Nicholls at CSSplay has a get CSS Based nav w/ 6 level drop down (Can be expanded to more if needed). This works in Internet Explorer IE5.5, IE6, IE7, Firefox, Opera and now Safari, Netscape 8 and Mozilla.