CSS3 only dropdown menu with transitions - css

Question

I'm trying to create a CSS3 only dropdown menu with transitions but it's not working 100% as I would like it to. I want the underline hover state to be the same even when you hover over the expanding dropdown menu.
Here's my first try:
http://codepen.io/Winterfox/pen/wGmEbY
ul {
text-align: center;
li {
display:inline-block;
margin-right: 15px;
transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;
&:hover {
.submenu {
height: 85px;
}
}
.submenu {
overflow:hidden;
position:absolute;
left: 0;
width: 100%;
background-color: #3862a0;
height: 0;
margin-top: 10px;
line-height: 40px;
box-sizing:border-box;
transition:height 0.3s ease-in-out;
transition-delay: 0.1s;
a {
color: #fff;
margin-top: 20px;
font-size: 16px;
&:hover {
color: #fff;
text-decoration:underline;
}
}
}
a {
color: #999;
display: block;
padding: 0 7px 0 7px;
margin: 0 0 0 0;
text-decoration: none;
position: relative;
&:hover {
color: #3862a0;
&::before {
visibility: visible;
transform: scale(1, 1);
}
}
&::before {
content: "";
position: absolute;
width: 100%;
height: 3px;
bottom: -10px;
left: 0px;
background-color: #3862a0;
transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out;
transform: scale(0, 0);
visibility: hidden;
}
}
}
}
As you can see the hover state is removed when hovering the expanded dropdown menu. I tried to fix this by moving the transitions to the li element as shown here:
http://codepen.io/Winterfox/pen/ZWxqvp
But then I got the problem that 1# when changing the position on the hover state the dropdown doesn't look good when it closes again. 2# The blue underline for the menu text now shows at the bottom of the page.
Any suggestions how to fix this with CSS3 only?

Answer 1

I think your thought was going in the right direction but instead of applying the styles to the li you could just move the anchor inside the li:hover block, as in:
li {
...
&:hover {
...
a {
color: #3862a0;
&::before {
visibility: visible;
transform: scale(1, 1);
}
}
}
}
Full code here: http://codepen.io/anon/pen/VaxrwE