30 Exceptional CSS Navigation Techniques

10 min. read
William Craig

CEO & Co-Founder
President of WebFX. Bill has over 25 years of experience in the Internet marketing industry specializing in SEO, UX, information architecture, marketing automation and more. William’s background in scientific computing and education from Shippensburg and MIT provided the foundation for MarketingCloudFX and other key research and development projects at WebFX.

We’ve seen innovative ways in which designers and developers have used CSS to innovate upon its shortcomings. The design of a site is just as important as SEO for your client’s business, so these tips should help you with your web design. Here, you’ll find some of the best ways to use CSS for your website navigation.

You’ll find a variety of techniques that truly showcase the capabilities of CSS. In this article, you will find a collection of excellent navigation techniques that use the CSS to provide users with an impressive interface for their web design. These techniques are great for a broad range of industries.

Whether your client is a realtor or a car dealership, these techniques should help improve their web design.

1. The Menu menu

This another great CSS menu Stu Nicholls that’s unique – hovering over a menu item reveals a submenu. If you want get started with this menu just simple view the source code. Demo in page.

2. Pure CSS hover menu

Pure CSS hover menu View Demo In this CSS technique, you’ll learn to create a vertically-oriented CSS hover menu that reveals a submenu when a menu item is hovered on.

3. Matte CSS Menu

Matte CSS View Demo Matte is a simple CSS menu with rounded corners using two small images only from 13styles. It is maintained by David Appleyard who has lots of simple and advanced CSS-based menus.

4. CSS Blur Menu

CSS Blur Menu View Demo This CSS technique shows you a method from creating a menu that blurs sibling menu items when you hover over an item.

5. CSS Navigation with Glowing Icons

CSS Navigation with Glowing Icons View Demo This beautiful CSS menu technique can be created by following along this extensive step-by-step tutorial.

6. CSS Sliding Door using only 1 image

CSS Sliding Door using only 1 image View Demo This slick CSS menu is based on the Sliding Doors technique but only uses one image.

7. Navigation Matrix Reloaded

Navigation Matrix Reloaded View Demo This stylish navigation menu technique uses a CSS sprite.

8. CSS Horizontal Menu

~~View Demo~~ Update: this no longer exists. Ian Main provides a great set of free CSS menus that are stylish and easy to use.

9. Woody CSS Menu

Woody CSS Menu. Woody is a pre-made CSS menu that’s ready to use and has been tested in IE6, IE 7, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome. Demo in the page.

10. Advanced CSS Menu

Advanced CSS Menu was created by Nick La and uses an advanced (extraordinary) list menu utilizing the CSS position property. Demo in the page.

11. Simple Yellow Tabbed

Simple Yellow Tabbed This menu is from CSS Menu Generator which has more free high quality menus. Demo in the page.

12. Vimeo-Like Top Navigation

View Demo This CSS-based navigation menu is based on the Vimeo primary menu.

13. Apple Like Colorful CSS Menu

Learn a technique for mimicking Apple’s image rollover CSS menu by following along this menu tutorial. Demo in page.

14. CSS Hoverbox

Inspired by the Hoverbox Image Gallery technique developed by Nathan Smith, CSS Hoverbox leans on the background-position CSS property to superimpose rollover images on top of neighboring menu items. Demo in page.

15. Big CSS Box

This is an experimental CSS menu that allows you to create a scaling menu that adjusts depending on the browser’s width. Demo in page.

16. Simple CSS-based drop-down menu

Simple CSS-based drop-down menu View Demo This is a very basic CSS-based drop-down menu that’s excellent for trying to grok the technique involved in creating drop-down menu that doesn’t require client-side scripting.

17. Two Level Horizontal Navigation in CSS

Two Level Horizontal Navigation in CSS View Demo Veerle Pieters provides a CSS menu and tutorial created using text-indent CSS property.

18. Uberlink CSS List Menus

View Demo This CSS navigation bar looks and behaves like an image-swapping menu.

19. CSS-Only Accordion Effect

CSS-Only Accordion Effect View Demo In this technique, you’ll witness a method for creating a CSS-based accordion menu.

20. Tabbed Navigation Using CSS

Tabbed Navigation Using CSS Here is another excellent method for creating a module tab interface based purely on CSS. Use the tabs in the page to learn about the instructions on how to implement this technique.

21. CSS Mini Tabs (the UN-tab, tab)

CSS Mini Tabs (the UN-tab, tab) View Demo This CSS menu on the popular web design agency SimpleBits shows a way for creating mini tabs. View the source code on the demo page to learn how it works (the code is inline and formatted well for readability for your convenience).

22. Drop-Down Menus, Horizontal Style

Drop-Down Menus, Horizontal Style View Demo This A List Apart CSS menu technique is for a fly-out submenu that appears on the right of the top-level menu, leveraging the position: absolute CSS property to move the submenu to the appropriate level.

23. List Into a Navigation Bar

View Demo Roger Johansson of 456 Berea Street shows us the basic principles of turning an unordered list into a navigation bar – it’s a great starting point for beginners to learn about building a semantic HTML structure and then styling it with CSS.