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>

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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
• Set margin: 0; and padding: 0; to remove browser default settings

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

• 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 (and padding, margin, height, etc. if you want)
• width: 60px; - Block elements take up the full width available by default. We want to specify a 60 pixels width

You can also set the width of <ul>, and remove the width of <a>, as they will take up the full width available when displayed as block elements. This will produce the same result as our previous example:

ul {
    list-style-type: none;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    width: 60px;} 

li a {
    display: block;}

Vertical Navigation Bar Examples

Create a basic vertical navigation bar with a gray background color and change the background color of the links when the user moves the mouse over them:

• Home
• News
• Contact
• About

ul {
    list-style-type: none;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    width: 200px;
    background-color: #f1f1f1;}

li a {
    display: block;
    color: #000;
    padding: 8px 16px;
    text-decoration: none;}

/* Change the link color on hover */
li a:hover {
    background-color: #555;
    color: white;}

Active/Current Navigation Link

Add an "active" class to the current link to let the user know which page he/she is on:

• Home
• News
• Contact
• About

.active {
    background-color: #4CAF50;
    color: white;}

Horizontal Navigation Bar Examples

Create a basic horizontal navigation bar with a dark background color and change the background color of the links when the user moves the mouse over them:

• Home
• News
• Contact
• About

ul {
    list-style-type: none;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    overflow: hidden;
    background-color: #333;}

li {
    float: left;}

li a {
    display: block;
    color: white;
    text-align: center;
    padding: 14px 16px;
    text-decoration: none;}

/* Change the link color to #111 (black) on hover */
li a:hover {
    background-color: #111;}