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What is a sidebar or vertical menu?

A sidebar or vertical menu is a common element in web page layouts, typically used to display navigation links or other important page content. They are typically located in a vertical orientation on the side or menu bar of a web page.

Use CSS Creating a Basic Sidebar
To create a basic sidebar, we can use CSS’s flexbox layout. First, we create a container with two divs: one for the sidebar and one for the main content area. Then, we use CSS to style the container so that it’s laid out vertically.

<div class="container">
<div class="sidebar">
<!-- Sidebar content -->
</div>
<div class="content">
<!-- Main content area -->
</div>
</div>

Next, we use CSS to style the container and the elements within it. We define the appearance of the sidebar by setting the container’s width and background color. Additionally, we set the height of the sidebar and main content so that they fill the entire container.

.container {
display: flex;
height: 100vh;
}

.sidebar {
width: 200px;
background-color: #f1f1f1;
}

.content {
flex: 1;
background-color: #ffffff;
}

With the above CSS code, we’ve implemented a simple layout with a sidebar and main content area. You can adjust the width and color of the sidebar, as well as the style of the main content area, to suit your needs.

Creating a Sidebar in Vaadin Using CSS

Creating a sidebar or vertical menu in Vaadin using CSS is similar to using pure HTML and CSS. We can use Vaadin components and CSS classes to build styles. Let’s say we want to create a layout in Vaadin with a sidebar and a main content area.

First, we can use Vaadin’s VerticalLayout component as a container. Then, we can add styles using the VerticalLayout’s CSS classes.

VerticalLayout container = new VerticalLayout(); 
container.addClassName("container"); 

Div sidebar = new Div(); 
sidebar.addClassName("sidebar"); 
sidebar.setText("Sidebar content"); 
container.add(sidebar); 

Div content = new Div(); 
content.addClassName("content"); 
content.setText("Main content area"); 
container.add(content); 

Next, we can add the corresponding CSS styles to the Vaadin stylesheet.

.container { 
display: flex; 
height: 100vh; 
} 

.sidebar { 
width: 200px;
background-color: #f1f1f1;
}

.content {
flex: 1;
background-color: #ffffff;
}

With the above code, we’ve successfully created a layout with a sidebar and a main content area in Vaadin.

Summary

In this article, we introduced how to create a sidebar or vertical menu in Vaadin using CSS. We used CSS’s flexbox layout to achieve this, providing basic examples and specific methods for using it in Vaadin. By flexibly utilizing CSS and Vaadin’s components, we can easily implement various layout requirements and provide a great user experience for our web applications.

We hope this article helps you create a sidebar or vertical menu in Vaadin!