CSS Navigation Bar

Navigation Bars

Having easy-to-use navigation is important for any web site.

With CSS you can transform boring HTML menus into good-looking navigation bars.

Navigation Bar = List of Links

A navigation bar needs standard HTML as a base.

In our examples we will build the navigation bar from a standard HTML list.

A navigation bar is basically a list of links, so using the <ul> and <li> elements makes perfect sense:

<ul>
  <li><a href="default.asp">Home</a></li>
  <li><a href="news.asp">News</a></li>
  <li><a href="contact.asp">Contact</a></li>
  <li><a href="about.asp">About</a></li>
</ul>

Now let's remove the bullets and the margins and padding from the list:

ul {
    list-style-type: none;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
}

Example explained:

• list-style-type: none; - Removes the bullets. A navigation bar does not need list markers
• Setting margins and padding to 0 to remove browser default settings

The code in the example above is the standard code used in both vertical, and horizontal navigation bars.

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Vertical Navigation Bar

To build a vertical navigation bar we only need to style the <a> elements, in addition to the code above:

a {
    display: block;
    width: 60px;
}

Example explained:

• display: block; - Displaying the links as block elements makes the whole link area clickable (not just the text), and it allows us to specify the width
• width: 60px; - Block elements take up the full width available by default. We want to specify a 60 pixels width

Tip: Also take a look at our fully styled vertical navigation bar example.

	Note: Always specify the width for <a> elements in a vertical navigation bar. If you omit the width, IE6 can produce unexpected results.

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Horizontal Navigation Bar

There are two ways to create a horizontal navigation bar. Using inline or floating list items.

Both methods work fine, but if you want the links to be the same size, you have to use the floating method.

Inline List Items

One way to build a horizontal navigation bar is to specify the <li> elements as inline, in addition to the "standard" code above:

li {
    display: inline;
}

Example explained:

• display: inline; - By default, <li> elements are block elements. Here, we remove the line breaks before and after each list item, to display them on one line

Floating List Items

In the example above the links have different widths.

For all the links to have an equal width, float the <li> elements and specify a width for the <a> elements:

li {
    float: left;
}

a {
    display: block;
    width: 60px;
}

Example explained:

• float: left; - use float to get block elements to slide next to each other
• display: block; - Displaying the links as block elements makes the whole link area clickable (not just the text), and it allows us to specify the width
• width: 60px; - Since block elements take up the full width available, they cannot float next to each other. We specify the width of the links to 60 pixels

Tip: Also take a look at our fully styled horizontal navigation bar example.