CSS Navigation Bar

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CSS Navigation Bar
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Demo: Navigation Bars
Vertical

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Horizontal

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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:

Example
<ul>
  <li><a href="default.html">Home</a></li>
  <li><a href="news.html">News</a></li>
  <li><a href="contact.html">Contact</a></li>
  <li><a href="about.html">About</a></li>
</ul>
»
Now let's remove the bullets and the margins and padding from the list:

Example
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.

Vertical Navigation Bar
To build a vertical navigation bar, you can style the <a> elements inside the list, in addition to the code above:

Example
li 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 (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:

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:

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Example
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:

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Example
.active {
    background-color: #4CAF50;
    color: white;
}
»
Center Links & Add Borders
Add text-align:center to <li> or <a> to center the links.

Add the border property to <ul> add a border around the navbar. If you also want borders inside the navbar, add a border-bottom to all <li> elements, except for the last one:

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Example
ul {
    border: 1px solid #555;
}

li {
    text-align: center;
    border-bottom: 1px solid #555;
}

li:last-child {
    border-bottom: none;
}
»
Full-height Fixed Vertical Navbar
Create a full-height, "sticky" side navigation:

Example
ul {
    list-style-type: none;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    width: 25%;
    background-color: #f1f1f1;
    height: 100%; /* Full height */
    position: fixed; /* Make it stick, even on scroll */
    overflow: auto; /* Enable scrolling if the sidenav has too much content */
}
»
Note: This example might not work properly on mobile devices.

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

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:

Example
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
Another way of creating a horizontal navigation bar is to float the <li> elements, and specify a layout for the navigation links:

Example
li {
    float: left;
}

a {
    display: block;
    padding: 8px;
    background-color: #dddddd;
}
»
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 padding (and height, width, margins, etc. if you want)
padding: 8px; - Since block elements take up the full width available, they cannot float next to each other. Therefore, specify some padding to make them look good
background-color: #dddddd; - Add a gray background-color to each a element
Tip: Add the background-color to <ul> instead of each <a> element if you want a full-width background color:

Example
ul {
    background-color: #dddddd;
}
»
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:

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Example
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;
}
»
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
Example
.active {
    background-color: #4CAF50;
}
»
Right-Align Links
Right-align links by floating the list items to the right (float:right;):

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Example
<ul>
  <li><a href="#home">Home</a></li>
  <li><a href="#news">News</a></li>
  <li><a href="#contact">Contact</a></li>
  <li style="float:right"><a class="active" href="#about">About</a></li>
</ul>
»
Border Dividers
Add the border-right property to <li> to create link dividers:

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Example
/* Add a gray right border to all list items, except the last item (last-child) */
li {
    border-right: 1px solid #bbb;
}

li:last-child {
    border-right: none;
}
»
Fixed Navigation Bar
Make the navigation bar stay at the top or the bottom of the page, even when the user scrolls the page:

Fixed Top
ul {
    position: fixed;
    top: 0;
    width: 100%;
}
»
Fixed Bottom
ul {
    position: fixed;
    bottom: 0;
    width: 100%;
}
»
Note: These examples might not work properly on mobile devices.

Gray Horizontal Navbar
An example of a gray horizontal navigation bar with a thin gray border:

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Example
ul {
    border: 1px solid #e7e7e7;
    background-color: #f3f3f3;
}

li a {
    color: #666;
}
»
More Examples
Responsive Topnav
How to use CSS3 media queries to create a responsive top navigation.

»
Responsive Sidenav
How to use CSS3 media queries to create a responsive side navigation.

»
Dropdown Navbar
How to add a dropdown menu inside a navigation bar.

»

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