making a dropdown menu fixed but css styling getting in the way

Question

I am a dropdown menu with two links, currently i want the menu to stick to the top right part of the section, however I styled it in a way that the container is supposed to be relatively positioned but it the ul inside is absolute so it drops down correctly. How do I now fix this in place? I tried adding position fixed to the button but obviously on scrolling down the ul doesn't appear even thought the button is fixed.

.contact {
  position: relative;
  top: 5vh;
  right: 4vw;
  font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif;
  height: 20vh;
  letter-spacing: 3px;
}

.contactbtn {
  color: white;
  text-transform: uppercase;
  font-size: 1.5rem;
  font-weight: bold;
  background: none;
  border: none;
  text-decoration: none;
  cursor: pointer;
  outline: none;
  position: fixed;
  /* only fixes the button */
}

.contactbtn:hover {
  opacity: 0.6;
}

.contact ul,
.contact-a ul {
  position: absolute;
  left: -10vw;
  margin-top: 4vh;
  color: black;
  width: 300px;
  height: 150px;
  font-size: 1.5rem;
  font-weight: bold;
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  justify-content: space-around;
  align-items: flex-end;
  list-style: none;
  text-transform: uppercase;
  font-size: 1rem;
  opacity: 0;
  transform: translateY(-10px);
  transition: all 0.4s ease;
  -webkit-transform: translateY(-10px);
  -webkit-transition: all 0.4s ease;
  -moz-transform: translateY(-10px);
  -moz-transition: all 0.4s ease;
}

.contact a,
.contact-a a {
  text-decoration: none;
}

.contact a:hover {
  background-color: var(--grCol3);
}

.menu-container:hover .menu {
  opacity: 1;
  pointer-events: all;
  transform: translateY(0);
  -moz-transform: translateY(0);
  -webkit-transform: translateY(0);
  outline: none;
}

<div class="contact menu-container">
  <button class="contactbtn" style="color:black;">Contact</button>
  <ul class="menu">
    <li>
      <p>For Any Enquiries→</p>
    </li>
    <li><a id="mail" style="color:black;" href="mailto:hello@leung.com" target="_blank">hello@leung.com</a></li>
    <li>
      <p>+44 5555 070158</p>
    </li><br>
    <li><a id="ig" href="https://www.instagram.com/leung/?hl=en" target="_blank" style="color:black;">Instagram</a></li>
  </ul>
</div>

Answer 1

Your example is not very clear since there's no vertical scrolling to be seen (not enough content to overfill the snippet example) BUT, adding some filler content, I see where this is going:

In order for your dropdown menu, which appears on the :hover of the button, to be relative to the button, regardless of your scroll position, it needs to be a child of the button. For that, the parent of the drop-down menu must be position:relative but, since the button is fixed, we need the following structure:

1. Our parent fixed element that contains everything
2. the container inside it that has position: relative
3. the button with no specific position rule stated
4. the dropdown menu with absolute positioning (assuming you want to fine-tune its position that way even though you could skip it altogether)

Which looks like this:

And then the nav area itself looks like this:

and finally, your css could be something like:

.nav-area {
position: fixed;
left: 20px;
top: 20px;
display: block;
width: 100px;
height: 50px;
overflow: visible;
}

.nav-wrapper {
display: block;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
position: relative;
overflow: visible;
}

.button {
display: block;
width: 100px;
height: 50px;
}

.drop-down-menu {
display: none;
position: absolute;
left: 0;
top: 50px;
}

On hover, make the next sibling element show (your dropdown menu)

.button:hover + .drop-down-menu {
display: block;
}

So, your nav-area is fixed to your screen, the nav-wrapper is inside the nav-area and has position:relative to allow position:absolute; elements inside it to target it. However, you don't really need position:absolute anymore.

Give it a try and let us know how it went.