How do you transition between display:none and display:block?

Question

I am trying to delay the appearance of mobile nav items (ideally without using JS to delay their appearance) until the nav overlay fully expands (0.4s).

There are two states: 1. non-overlay state: The top nav has a hamburger menu on the left and my name on the right. The 4 nav links are hidden. 2. overlay state: The hamburger menu turns to an x, the top nav transitions to cover the full page, and 4 nav links appear centralized on the nav overlay.

I've read elsewhere that modern browsers will disregard any animation or transition specifications if display: changes. Is this still the case? How can I overcome this and delay the appearance of the nav items until the overlay fully expands?

It appears to be working here: https://codepen.io/KingKabir/pen/QyPwgG but I'm not sure how they are accomplishing it?

I've tried using visibility: and opacity: but they don't completely hide the 4 nav elements in the non-overlay state, thus messing up my name in the right side of the nav menu in the non-overlay state.

HTML:

  <nav class="nav_container" id="overlay">
    <div class="hamburger" id="hamburger" onclick="mobileMenu()">
      <div class="bar1"></div>
      <div class="bar2"></div>
      <div class="bar3"></div>
    </div>
    <div class="icon_personal_container">
      <a href="../index.html">
        <svg role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" id="icon_personal">
          <title>J Logo</title>
          <defs>
            <linearGradient x1="14.6040568%" y1="100%" x2="85.3959432%" y2="0%" id="linearGradient-1">
              <stop stop-color="#12A9FF" offset="0%"></stop>
              <stop stop-color="#FF0096" offset="100%"></stop>
            </linearGradient>
          </defs>
          <g stroke="none" stroke-width="1" fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd">
            <circle fill="#333333" cx="12" cy="11.94" r="12"></circle>
            <polygon points="18.57144 7.82616 14.68812 7.82616 12 7.82616 12 5.16 18.57144 5.16"></polygon>
            <path d="M12.0021063,5.16 L17.3805494,5.16 L14.6827527,7.80073139 L14.6827527,13.044557 C14.6827527,16.5810127 13.1030779,18.9 9.57770614,18.9 C8.045129,18.9 6.72924975,18.3030871 5.82008559,17.4140986 C5.81142009,17.4056254 6.46074609,16.7540162 7.76806357,15.459271 C8.20030047,15.9163181 8.81488621,16.2138397 9.57770614,16.2138397 C11.2344382,16.2138397 11.985747,15.1509705 11.985747,13.1218565 L11.985747,5.16 L12.0021063,5.16 Z"
              fill="url(#linearGradient-1)"></path>
          </g>
        </svg>
      </a>
    </div>
    <div class="nav_tab" id="nav_tab_about"><a href="#about" class="nav_tab_hover_effect" onclick="mobileMenu()">About</a></div>
    <div class="nav_tab" id="nav_tab_work"><a href="#work" class="nav_tab_hover_effect" onclick="mobileMenu()">Work</a></div>
    <div class="nav_tab" id="nav_tab_skills"><a href="#skills" class="nav_tab_hover_effect" onclick="mobileMenu()">Skills</a></div>
    <div class="nav_tab" id="nav_tab_contact"><a href="#contact" class="nav_tab_hover_effect" onclick="mobileMenu()">Contact</a></div>
    <div class="blanks"></div>
    <div class="blanks"></div>
    <div id="nav_text">Jordan Tranchina</div>
  </nav>

CSS:

    .nav_container {
    display: grid;
    grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr 1fr 1fr !important;
    grid-template-rows: auto;
    column-gap: 16px;
    grid-template-areas:
      "nav-far-left nav-left nav-right nav-far-right";
  }
  .nav_container.open {
    max-height: 100%;
    height: 200%;
    background-color: #000000;
    display: grid;
    grid-template-rows: auto auto auto auto auto;
    grid-template-areas:
      "nav-far-left nav-left nav-right nav-far-right"
      "second second second second"
      "third third third third"
      "fourth fourth fourth fourth"
      "fifth fifth fifth fifth";
    transition: all 0.4s cubic-bezier(0.455, 0.03, 0.515, 0.955);
  }

  .icon_personal_container,.blanks{
    display: none;
  }
  .nav_tab {
    display: block;
    height: 0;
    width: 0;
    visibility: hidden;
    opacity: 0;
  }
  .nav_tab.open{
    display: block;
    height: auto;
    font-size: 32px;
    font-weight: 500;
    padding-top: 64px;
    visibility: visible;
    opacity: 1;
    transition: visibility 0s linear;
  }

  #nav_tab_about.open{
    grid-area: second;
    transition-delay: .10s;
    width: auto;
  }
  #nav_tab_work.open {
    grid-area: third;
    transition-delay: .15s;
    width: auto;
  }
  #nav_tab_skills.open {
    grid-area: fourth;
    transition-delay: .2s;
    width: auto;
  }
  #nav_tab_contact.open {
    grid-area: fifth;
    transition-delay: .25s;
    width: auto;
  }

  #nav_text {
    grid-area: 1 / nav-right / 1 / nav-far-right;
  }

Javascript:

function mobileMenu() {
  document.getElementById("hamburger").classList.toggle("active"); // toggling active class
  document.body.classList.toggle("overlay-body"); //toggling overlay state on body
  document.getElementById("overlay").classList.toggle("open"); //toggling overlay state on nav by setting classlist to "open"
  // improve below by grabing by class not by id
  document.getElementById("nav_tab_about").classList.toggle("open");
  document.getElementById("nav_tab_work").classList.toggle("open");
  document.getElementById("nav_tab_skills").classList.toggle("open");
  document.getElementById("nav_tab_contact").classList.toggle("open");
}

I expect the nav elements of class "nav_tab" to appear a few 10ths of a second after the nav_container has time to expand fully.

The current result is that the nav elements of class "nav_tab" appear immediately, before the nav_container has time to expand fully.

Answer 1

If you use visibility and opacity in conjunction with max-height, you can achieve a nice transition from visible to hidden or vice-versa. Setting the element's max-height to 0 when it's hidden, and max-height to Xpx (larger than your element will ever be) when visible, prevents the element from messing with your layout in any way (as you mentioned in your question).

Here's a quick example:

var visible = document.querySelector(".visible");

function hide() {
  visible.classList.add("hidden");
}

visible.addEventListener("click", hide);

div {
  background-color: blue;
  padding: 40px;
  color: white;
  cursor: pointer;
  transition: all .1s ease;
}

.visible {
  visibility: visible;
  opacity: 1;
  max-height: 1000px;
}

.hidden {
  visibility: hidden;
  opacity: 0;
  max-height: 0;
}

<div class="visible">Click to hide</div>

Answer 2

You can just add one more parameter to you transition which is 'delay'. Delay is the fourth parameter for transition, in your case it can look like this:

transition: all 0.4s cubic-bezier(0.455, 0.03, 0.515, 0.955) 2s;

Now this animation will start with 2 seconds delay.

To make you closer to what you want achieve, I made small changes in your CSS, which I will describe below:

1. For element .nav_container.open replace lines:

   max-height: 100%;
   height: 200%;
   

   with one line:

   min-height: 100vh;
   

   It will make your container to expand at least to the height of the window.

2. For element .nav_tab replace:

   display: none;
   

   with:

   display: block;
   opacity: 0;
   

   With that you can hide your links and avoid no animation for showing them.

3. For element .nav_tab.open remove these two lines:

   display: block;
   visibility: visible;
   

   and add these two lines:

   opacity: 1;
   transition: all 0.6s linear 0.4s;
   

   Where 0.6s is the animation duration and 0.4s is delay - set it to no lower than duration for expand nav_container.

Check the result and let me know if your are closer to your target ;)