I am using github to host a static site and Jekyll to generate it.
I have a menu bar (as
) and would like the correspo
I used a little bit of JavaScript to accomplish this. I have the following structure in the menu:
<ul id="navlist">
<li><a id="index" href="index.html">Index</a></li>
<li><a href="about.html">About</a></li>
<li><a href="projects.html">Projects</a></li>
<li><a href="videos.html">Videos</a></li>
</ul>
This javascript snippet highlights the current corresponding page:
$(document).ready(function() {
var pathname = window.location.pathname;
$("#navlist a").each(function(index) {
if (pathname.toUpperCase().indexOf($(this).text().toUpperCase()) != -1)
$(this).addClass("current");
});
if ($("a.current").length == 0)
$("a#index").addClass("current");
});
The navigation of your website should be an unordered list. To get the list items to lighten up when they are active, the following liquid script adds an 'active' class to them. This class should be styled with CSS. To detect which link is active, the script uses ‘contains’, as you can see in the code below.
<ul>
<li {% if page.url contains '/getting-started' %}class="active"{% endif %}>
<a href="/getting-started/">Getting started</a>
</li>
...
...
...
</ul>
This code is compatible with all permalink styles in Jekyll. The ‘contains’ statement succesfully highlights the first menu item at the following URL’s:
Source: http://jekyllcodex.org/without-plugin/simple-menu/
My approach is to define a custom variable in the YAML front matter of the page and output this on the <body>
element:
<body{% if page.id %} data-current-page="{{ page.id }}"{% endif %}>
My navigation links include the identifier of the page that they link to:
<nav>
<ul>
<li><a href="artists.html" data-page-id="artists">artists</a></li>
<li><a href="#" data-page-id="contact">contact</a></li>
<li><a href="#" data-page-id="about">about</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
In the page front matter we set the page id:
---
layout: default
title: Our artists
id: artists
---
And finally a bit of jQuery to set the active link:
// highlight current page
var currentPage = $("body").data("current-page");
if (currentPage) {
$("a[data-page-id='" + currentPage + "']").addClass("active");
}
if you're using the Minima theme for jekyll, you only need to add a ternary on the class attribute in header.html:
<a {% if my_page.url == page.url %} class="active"{% endif %} href="{{ my_page.url | relative_url }}">
the full excerpt:
<div class="trigger">
{%- for path in page_paths -%}
{%- assign my_page = site.pages | where: "path", path | first -%}
{%- if my_page.title -%}
<a {% if my_page.url == page.url %} class="active"{% endif %} href="{{ my_page.url | relative_url }}">{{ my_page.title | escape }}</a>
{%- endif -%}
{%- endfor -%}
</div>
add this to your _config.yml
header_pages:
- classes.markdown
- activities.markdown
- teachers.markdown
And then of course your css:
a.active {
color: #e6402a;
}
Similar to @ben-foster's solution but without using any jQuery
I needed something simple, this is what I did.
In my front matter I added a variable called active
e.g.
---
layout: generic
title: About
active: about
---
I have a navigation include with the following section
<ul class="nav navbar-nav">
{% if page.active == "home" %}
<li class="active"><a href="#">Home</a></li>
{% else %}
<li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
{% endif %}
{% if page.active == "blog" %}
<li class="active"><a href="#">Blog</a></li>
{% else %}
<li><a href="../blog/">Blog</a></li>
{% endif %}
{% if page.active == "about" %}
<li class="active"><a href="#">About</a></li>
{% else %}
<li><a href="../about">About</a></li>
{% endif %}
</ul>
This works for me as the amount of links in the navigation are very narrow.
Here's my solution which I think is the best way to highlight the current page:
Define a navigation list on your _config.yml like this:
navigation:
- title: blog
url: /blog/
- title: about
url: /about/
- title: projects
url: /projects/
Then in your _includes/header.html file you must loop through the list to check if the current page (page.url) resembles any item of the navigation list, if so then you just set the active class and add it to the <a>
tag:
<nav>
{% for item in site.navigation %}
{% assign class = nil %}
{% if page.url contains item.url %}
{% assign class = 'active' %}
{% endif %}
<a href="{{ item.url }}" class="{{ class }}">
{{ item.title }}
</a>
{% endfor %}
</nav>
And because you're using the contains operator instead of the equals = operator, you don't have to write extra code to make it work with URLs such as '/blog/post-name/' or 'projects/project-name/'. So it works really well.
P.S: Don't forget to set the permalink variable on your pages.