I know this can be easily to be achieved with css and jQuery. You can apply style on the jQuery event onmouseover and onmouseout. When the user hovers over the menu this event will trigger I will show you how to create effects.
Example:
<html>
<head>
<title> create menu hover effect using onmouseover andonmouseout in JQuery</title>
<script src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-1.10.2.js"></script>
</head>
<body style="width: 600px;">
<style type="text/css">
.menu {
background-color: #CDDC39;
list-style: none;
margin: 100px;
padding: 0;
width: 10em;
}
.menu li {
margin: 0;
padding: 5px;
}
.menu a {
color: #333;
}
</style>
<ul class="menu">
<li onmouseover="this.style.backgroundColor='#F44336';" onmouseout="this.style.backgroundColor='transparent';" style="background-color: transparent;">
<a href="http://www.infinetsoft.com/">learn dot net skills</a>
</li>
<li onmouseover="this.style.backgroundColor='#F44336';" onmouseout="this.style.backgroundColor='transparent';" style="background-color: transparent;">
<a href="http://www.infinetsoft.com/htmltry">Work out html</a>
</li>
<li onmouseover="this.style.backgroundColor='#F44336';" onmouseout="this.style.backgroundColor='transparent';" style="background-color: transparent;">
<a href="http://www.infinetsoft.com/Category/JQuery/9/1">jQurey tutorials</a>
</li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>
Output: