"Adding Active States to the Navigation"

Question

I think that there's a typo somewhere in the lesson as well as in the project file zip. Everything was fine up until I had to edit "header.php" and add the conditional statement. I tried downloading the lesson files and pasting it into my code, but it seems like there's a typo in the files since it displays the webpage without any formatting.

Also, can someone please explain this part of the code: if ($section == "shirts") { echo "on"; } I understand the "if" part, but doesn't {echo "on";} just print out "on"? I know the objective is to activate the class to underline it, but I don't understand how that command does that.

Any suggestions are appreciated! Thanks

Answer 1 · 2013-11-27T02:52:45Z

November 27, 2013 2:52am

Hey Tiffany,

I haven't actually done the lesson myself, so I can't speak for the typo in the lesson, but I can explain the second part for you.

It looks like we're passing a variable called $section from a page into header.php. That if statement looks to see if the var $section is equal to shirts. If it is, it does in fact print "on". This way, we can do something like

<li <?php if ($section == "shirts") { echo 'class= "on"'; } ?>>List item</li>

If $section equals shirts, then we will end up with

<li class="on">List Item</li>

and target .on in the css to give that list item or link an underline like so:

.on { text-decoration: underline; }

Hope that quick explanation helps!

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Tiffany Hsieh

Tiffany Hsieh

"Adding Active States to the Navigation"

1 Answer

Sean Washington

Sean Washington