Issue with jQuery Lavalamp active state

Question

Good Afternoon, I am having a hard time setting the navigational links to active state when a user clicks on the link. I have a header.php file that holds the nav and lavalamp id. The header.php is included on each page. When I click on the "about" page link, the line still remains on its default position which is on the "home" link. I am running this in php if that helps.

Appreciate your help...Thank you.

The header.php consists of the following html:

<div id="nav" class="grid_9 push_3">
<ul class="lavaLamp" id="lavaLampLine">
        <li><a href="index.php">HOME</a></li>
    <li><a href="about.php">ABOUT US</a></li>
    <li><a href="product.php">SUPPORT</a></li>
    <li><a href="blog">OUR BLOG</a></li>
        <li><a href="contact.php">CONTACT US</a></li>
</ul><!-- end menu -->
</div><!-- end nav -->

---

The css:

/* Styles for the entire LavaLamp menu */

.lavaLamp {
    position: relative;
    height:15px;
    width:421px;
    margin:3px 0;
    padding:80px 0 0 0;
/* overflow: hidden; */
}
/* Force the list to flow horizontally */
.lavaLamp li {
    float:left;
    list-style:none;
}
/* Represents the background of the highlighted menu-item. */
.lavaLamp li.back {
    border-bottom:4px solid #3A7CB8;
    width:9px;
    height:15px;
    top:90px;
    position:absolute;
    z-index:8;
}

.lavaLamp li.back .left {
    border-bottom:4px solid #3A7CB8;
    height:15px;
    overflow:hidden;
 margin-right: 5px; /* 5px is the width of the rounded shape */
}
/* Styles for each menu-item. */
.lavaLamp li a {
    font-size:16px;
    font-weight:normal;
    text-decoration:none;
    display:inline;
    color:#095BA6;
    text-align:center;
    margin: auto 12px;
    display: block;
    float: left;
    cursor:pointer;
    outline: none;
    z-index:10;
    height:30px;
    position:relative;
}

.lavaLamp li a:hover, .lavaLamp li a:active, .lavaLamp li a:visited {
    border: none;
}
.active {
    border: none;
    color:#000000;
    font-weight:bold;
}

Answer 1

Use a PHP if/else statement to add the class "current" to the li you're on.

something like:

<li <?php if(strpos($_SERVER["PHP_SELF"],"index.php") !== false) echo 'class="current'; ?>><a href="index.php" >HOME</a></li>

for each li, change "index.php" to whatever the filename it is. This is pretty inefficient... you could also do it like this:

<?php
$parts = Explode('/', $_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]);
$currentFile = $parts[count($parts) - 1];
?>

and then in each LI you can say:

<li <?php if($currentFile == "index.php") echo 'class="current'; ?>><a href="index.php" >HOME</a></li>

(source: http://www.scriptygoddess.com/archives/2007/07/13/use-php-to-get-the-current-pagefile-name/)