How to make Twitter Bootstrap menu dropdown on hov

Question

I'd like to have my Bootstrap menu automatically drop down on hover, rather than having to click the menu title. I'd also like to lose the little arrows next to the menu titles.

Answer 1

This should hide the drop downs and their carets if they are smaller than a tablet.

@media (max-width: 768px) {
    .navbar ul.dropdown-menu, .navbar li.dropdown b.caret {
        display: none;
    }
}

Answer 2

For the caret... I haven't seen any one specifying simple CSS that totally blocks the caret.

Here you go:

.caret {
    display: none !important;
}

Answer 3

In my opinion the best way is like this:

;(function($, window, undefined) {
    // Outside the scope of the jQuery plugin to
    // keep track of all dropdowns
    var $allDropdowns = $();

    // If instantlyCloseOthers is true, then it will instantly
    // shut other nav items when a new one is hovered over
    $.fn.dropdownHover = function(options) {

        // The element we really care about
        // is the dropdown-toggle's parent
        $allDropdowns = $allDropdowns.add(this.parent());

        return this.each(function() {
            var $this = $(this),
                $parent = $this.parent(),
                defaults = {
                    delay: 500,
                    instantlyCloseOthers: true
                },
                data = {
                    delay: $(this).data('delay'),
                    instantlyCloseOthers: $(this).data('close-others')
                },
                settings = $.extend(true, {}, defaults, options, data),
                timeout;

            $parent.hover(function(event) {

                // So a neighbor can't open the dropdown
                if(!$parent.hasClass('open') && !$this.is(event.target)) {
                    return true;
                }

                if(settings.instantlyCloseOthers === true)
                    $allDropdowns.removeClass('open');

                window.clearTimeout(timeout);
                $parent.addClass('open');
            }, function() {
                timeout = window.setTimeout(function() {
                    $parent.removeClass('open');
                }, settings.delay);
            });

            // This helps with button groups!
            $this.hover(function() {
                if(settings.instantlyCloseOthers === true)
                    $allDropdowns.removeClass('open');

                window.clearTimeout(timeout);
                $parent.addClass('open');
            });

            // Handle submenus
            $parent.find('.dropdown-submenu').each(function(){
                var $this = $(this);
                var subTimeout;
                $this.hover(function() {
                    window.clearTimeout(subTimeout);
                    $this.children('.dropdown-menu').show();

                    // Always close submenu siblings instantly
                    $this.siblings().children('.dropdown-menu').hide();
                }, function() {
                    var $submenu = $this.children('.dropdown-menu');
                    subTimeout = window.setTimeout(function() {
                        $submenu.hide();
                    }, settings.delay);
                });
            });
        });
    };

    $(document).ready(function() {
        // apply dropdownHover to all elements with the data-hover="dropdown" attribute
        $('[data-hover="dropdown"]').dropdownHover();
    });
})(jQuery, this);

Sample markup:

<li class="dropdown">
    <a href="#" class="dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown" data-hover="dropdown" data-delay="1000" data-close-others="false">
        Account <b class="caret"></b>
    </a>
    <ul class="dropdown-menu">
        <li><a tabindex="-1" href="#">My Account</a></li>
        <li class="divider"></li>
        <li><a tabindex="-1" href="#">Change Email</a></li>
        <li><a tabindex="-1" href="#">Change Password</a></li>
        <li class="divider"></li>
        <li><a tabindex="-1" href="#">Logout</a></li>
    </ul>
</li>

Answer 4

You can use the default $().dropdown('toggle') method to toggle the dropdown menu on hover:

$(".nav .dropdown").hover(function() {
  $(this).find(".dropdown-toggle").dropdown("toggle");
});

Answer 5

In addition to the answer from "My Head Hurts" (which was great):

ul.nav li.dropdown:hover ul.dropdown-menu{
    display: block;    
}

There are 2 lingering issues:

1. Clicking on the dropdown link will open the dropdown-menu. And it will stay open unless the user clicks somewhere else, or hovers back over it, creating an awkward UI.
2. There is a 1px margin between the dropdown link, and dropdown-menu. This causes the dropdown-menu to become hidden if you move slowly between the dropdown and dropdown-menu.

The solution to (1) is removing the "class" and "data-toggle" elements from the nav link

<a href="#">
     Dropdown
     <b class="caret"></b>
</a>

This also gives you the ability to create a link to your parent page - which wasn't possible with the default implementation. You can just replace the "#" with whatever page you want to send the user.

The solution to (2) is removing the margin-top on the .dropdown-menu selector

.navbar .dropdown-menu {
 margin-top: 0px;
}

Answer 6

I've used a bit of jQuery:

// Add hover effect to menus
jQuery('ul.nav li.dropdown').hover(function() {
  jQuery(this).find('.dropdown-menu').stop(true, true).delay(200).fadeIn();
}, function() {
  jQuery(this).find('.dropdown-menu').stop(true, true).delay(200).fadeOut();
});