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Building a Navbar

9:17 with Guil Hernandez

Bootstrap simplifies many complex or time-consuming tasks like building navigations, from controls, drop-down menus and more. In this video, we'll continue building the Full Stack Conf site using Bootstrap's UI components, starting with the navbar.

Teacher's Notes
Questions?
Video Transcript
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Code snippet

    <!-- navbar -->
    <nav class="navbar navbar-expand-lg navbar-dark bg-primary fixed-top">
      <div class="container">
        <a class="navbar-brand order-1 mr-0" href="https://www.teamtreehouse.com" target="_blank">Presented by Treehouse</a>
        <button class="navbar-toggler" type="button" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#navbarNavAltMarkup" aria-controls="navbarNavAltMarkup" aria-expanded="false" aria-label="Toggle navigation">
          <span class="navbar-toggler-icon"></span>
        </button>
        <div class="collapse navbar-collapse" id="navbarNavAltMarkup">
          <div class="navbar-nav">
            <a class="nav-item nav-link" href="#home">Home <span class="sr-only">(current)</span></a>
            <a class="nav-item nav-link" href="#about">About</a>
            <a class="nav-item nav-link" href="#speakers">Speakers</a>
            <a class="nav-item nav-link" href="#schedule">Schedule</a>
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>
    </nav><!-- /navbar -->

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[MUSIC] 0:00

Bootstrap simplifies many complex or time consuming tasks like building navigation 0:04

systems, form controls, drop down menus, and more. 0:09

For example, interactive components like drop down, alert, 0:12

and modal windows require JavaScript to work. 0:16

But Bootstrap lets you quickly create an interactive component 0:20

by simply giving an element a class, ID, or data attribute. 0:23

You don't have to write any JavaScript, because Bootstrap already provides it. 0:27

In the last section of this course, 0:30

you saw how Bootstrap greatly simplifies page layout. 0:33

CSS layout can be tricky, and 0:37

creating your own CSS grid system is time consuming. 0:38

So Bootstrap's predefined classes and grid let you focus on the higher level parts of 0:41

your project, instead of worrying about small, 0:46

repetitive tests like calculating column widths, loads, and writing media queries. 0:48

Bootstrap components let us create interactive components just as easily. 0:53

So coming up in this section, we'll press on and build out the rest of 0:57

the Full Stack Conf site using some of Bootstrap's UI components. 1:01

So let's start with a nav bar. 1:05

Click the Components link to view all the available components. 1:08

Now a good way to start using any of these components is to copy their code snippets 1:13

from the Bootstrap docs, paste them into your project, 1:16

then make changes to the HTML and CSS to customize the components. 1:19

So as you're building the site, feel free to experiment with other components to 1:23

explore the capabilities of Bootstrap. 1:27

There's one key component missing from our website, the navigation. 1:30

So let's quickly build a navigation that looks like the one in the mock-up. 1:34

Back in index.html, below the opening body tag, 1:38

I'll write a set of HTML comments for my navbar. 1:43

I want the navigation to stretch from edge to edge of the browser window. 1:48

So I'll create the navbar outside of the container, that way the navigation isn't 1:53

constrained by the position and width of the container div. 1:57

So Bootstrap comes with lots of easily customizable navigation components, 2:02

that are built using Flexbox. 2:07

For instance, you can quickly add a basic navigation to your site, 2:09

using the base nav component snippet. 2:14

So I'll copy this snippet, and paste it between my navbar comments 2:17

Then you have the option to align the nav horizontally or vertically. 2:26

Or you can quickly generate a tabbed navigation by simply 2:33

adding the class nav-tabs 2:37

You can even display pill shaped navigation links, like this, 2:49

using the class nav-pills. 2:54

Now the website mock-up shows that we should create a navigation bar containing 3:02

the navigation links on the left side, and 3:07

a link to the organizer's website on the right side. 3:09

Bootstrap has the perfect component for this, Navbar. 3:13

Navbar is a wrapper for positioning navigation, branding, and 3:19

other elements into a navigation header. 3:23

As you can see, you can even include a search field in the navbar. 3:26

So I'm going to use this nav snippet, which is similar to the regular nav we 3:30

have now, except you can use different color schemes and 3:35

it's easier to position the navigation menu. 3:38

It even collapses the navigation in the extra small to medium breakpoint range, 3:41

and displays a navbar-toggle icon to open the nav menu. 3:47

So I'll use one of these nav snippets provided here to build my navbar. 3:51

And the first one uses an unordered list to lay out the nav links. 3:56

And the second snippet works and looks exactly the same way, except that it 4:02

doesn't use a list based approach, instead it uses a div with nested anchor elements. 4:06

So I'll copy this second snippet and 4:12

replace the nav component that's in the HTML file. 4:14

Next I'll change the links to match the content in our site. 4:26

So for the home link, I'll make the href attribute #home, 4:29

then I'll replace Features with About and set its href to #about. 4:36

Below that we'll set this link to Speakers. 4:43

And the final link will be the link to the Schedule. 4:50

And we don't need the active and disabled classes. 4:58

So let's remove the active class from the Home link and 5:01

the disabled class from the Schedule link. 5:05

So let's have a look. 5:09

If you resize the browser, 5:13

you'll see that the navbar provides proper responsive styling out of the box. 5:15

So in the medium breakpoint range, the navigation links collapse and we're 5:20

presented with the toggle menu, which you can click to show and hide the nav links. 5:24

Bootstrap provides the class navbar-brand as a class you can use for 5:32

your company, product, or project name. 5:37

So I'll update the navbar-brand's href attribute with the link to Treehouse. 5:40

You can copy these exact snippets from the teacher's notes of this video. 5:48

And I'll change the text to Presented by Treehouse. 5:55

Let’s also add target_blank so the link opens in a new tab or window. 6:02

So now I want to display the Presented by Treehouse link to the right of 6:13

the navigation links so that it’s flush with the right edge of the nav. 6:17

Well, since the nav uses Flexbox, 6:22

I can take advantage of the order classes to control the visual order of the link. 6:24

So giving the navbar-brand link the class order-1, 6:28

shifts the links to the right of the navigation links. 6:36

The default navbar's text color is gray, against a light gray background, but 6:41

I'd like a brighter background color. 6:46

Well, changing the colors in the navbar is easy with the navbar theming classes and 6:47

background color utilities. 6:52

I like the white navigation links against the dark blue background shown here. 6:54

So to apply this color scheme to my Navbar, 6:59

I'll copy the navbar-dark and bg-primary classes from the snippet and 7:02

replace navbar-light and bg-light with these new classes. 7:08

And that looks a lot better. 7:16

So now the content inside the navbar 7:18

should be aligned with the rest of the page. 7:21

Meaning, the content's left and right margins should line up with the left and 7:23

right margins of the container below as we see here in the mock-up. 7:29

Well, the container's width is constrained and 7:33

doesn't stretch to fill the full width of the page. 7:36

Again, because I want the navbar component to stretch across the entire width 7:38

of the browser window, I placed it outside the container. 7:43

So to align the Navigation menu and Treehouse link with the rest of the page, 7:48

I can simply wrap the Navbar content in a container. 7:52

So back in my code, right below the opening nav tag, 7:57

I'll add a div with a class container and 8:02

place the closing div tag just above the closing nav tag. 8:05

And now our navigation links are centered on the page, good. 8:17

Next to make the Presented by Treehouse link perfectly 8:21

flush with the right edge of the navbar, 8:26

I'll use the merge in utility class mr-0, or margin right 0, 8:30

to remove its right margin and that looks better. 8:35

Finally, let's make this a fixed navbar, so 8:40

users never lose sight of the navigation. 8:43

It will always stay at the top of the page. 8:45

Well, Bootstrap makes it easy to fix a navbar to the top or 8:48

bottom of the viewport. 8:52

For example, you can give the navbar component the class fixed-top. 8:53

And it will stick to the top of the browser. 9:03

So now when I scroll down the page, the navbar remains fixed in one spot. 9:05

Now if you notice that the fixed positioning of the navbar covers up parts 9:10

of the headings, don't worry. 9:13

We'll fix this in the next video. 9:15

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