Smashing Magazine - we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.
Vitaly Friedman, editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine (www.smashingmagazine.com), an online magazine dedicated to designers and developers.
- 132 Comments
- 1
- 2February 26th, 2008 10:24 am
Very nice collection again. Thank you…
- 3February 26th, 2008 10:37 am
I’m not a fan of vertical tabs, but that’s just me I suppose – I find they’re ever-so-slightly harder to read than horizontally aligned text.
‘Speaking navigation’ is ok too – but one could argue that if the main link isn’t self explanatory, then it needs to be reworded – that extra text may ‘help’ explain, but in many cases, I feel it’s overkill.
- 4February 26th, 2008 10:37 am
Really like cobahair.co.uk. A great list. Thanx.
- 5February 26th, 2008 10:39 am
I good variance in navigation types. This should be a good reference to come back to whenever a navigation creative block comes about.
Personally, I think navigation design is what makes websites in today’s world so popular. Intuitive, and more importantly user centered navigation is what makes some sites so popular. Content is easy to reach without a lot of time searching mindlessly. The experimental navigation systems are nice, but I would always suggest only using them on “personal playground” sites, where a committed community is already willing to spend a few extra seconds to navigate to the content they desire, because they know the overall outcome is going to be beneficial.
My suggestion for personal portfolio sites and more organized company showcases is to keep it simple. Sure, the client sees first hand exactly what kind of cool stuff you can do with Javascript or Flash, but if they have a hard time navigating to the section of your site that they want to see, it is going to say a lot about their own user centered design concerns.
I feel like I am rambling…great list!
- 6February 26th, 2008 10:40 am
Nice collection, thanks…
- 7February 26th, 2008 10:41 am
Really nice collection! Thanks.
- 8February 26th, 2008 11:05 am
Most users don’t use universal navigation. These might be new approaches, but they don’t really serve any useful purpose. Most actually hinder navigation. Reading horizontally strikes me as particularly silly, while having to explain a link is admitting that you can’t express yourself concisely. All they tell me is that the designer can either code some abstruse CSS and/or a graphic designer is in charge of the design.
Contextual navigation (especially through breadcrumbs) should be the future. My site has no universal navigation apart from a logo in the top left corner that links to the home page.
- 9February 26th, 2008 11:21 am
Nice collection!
- 10February 26th, 2008 11:45 am
I would like to ask question about css, isit possible to make the mac button in css which can be used in all browser? Anyone can help how to code it ?
- 11February 26th, 2008 11:49 am
You are Smashing some great articles of late! Navigation is a topic I love to revisit often – it’s inspiring and fun to read of the new, old, new again trends etc.
- 12February 26th, 2008 11:59 am
very useuful list, especially for inspiration for a new design im working on for my site! i ALWAYS loved the Mac designs, but im moving towards sites that have more icons on them to give user feedback.
im not a fan of the grunge designs but i can see why they are popular.
- 13February 26th, 2008 12:00 pm
Nice collection, thanks for share.
By the way… hellocolor.com link doesn’t work. I think you forget the “http://” - 14February 26th, 2008 12:09 pm
Very nice collection!
Thanks. - 15February 26th, 2008 1:41 pm
I really like the navigation on this site: http://timothysykes.com/
Anyone here know how they did that? Is it ajax? I’m sure there’s some code available somewhere… - 16
- 17February 26th, 2008 3:09 pm
while it’s cool, NickAd’s site navigation raises my anxiety levels.
- 18February 26th, 2008 3:28 pm
Nice selection of menus there, made me feel like I’d better pull my finger out and sort mine now.
- 19February 26th, 2008 3:44 pm
Great selection as usual!
I love the pink one, it could looks nice on my weblog. :) - 20February 26th, 2008 3:55 pm
Very nice collection
- 21February 26th, 2008 4:09 pm
..however, that rainbow menu is the one, that I had on my previous portfolio version, still to see at:
Thanks,
P:]
- 22February 26th, 2008 4:39 pm
@lukxiufung (# 10)
Yeah, there is an easy way to make all buttons universal using CSS (assuming you mean an input button such as submit).
all you need to do is create a class and then apply it to your input tag.
An example…
input.button {
background: url(”images/button.jpg”) top left no-repeat;
width: 100px;
height: 25px;
}input.button:hover {
background: url(”images/button_hover.jpg”) top left no-repeat;
}Although a bit more advanced I would suggest creating both states in the same image and then just shifting the background position, this way you don’t get a weird white flicker while the hover state image loads.
I am still learning CSS so by all means please someone correct me if I am wrong.
- 23February 26th, 2008 4:41 pm
Very nice collection. I like the experimental solutions, some of them really stands out!
- 24February 26th, 2008 5:13 pm
Fun to see what people are using out there. As site overhauls are (or should be) few and far between so as not to overly confuse your visitors, it is important to find something visually appealing that works, and then make minor tweaks along the way.
- 25February 26th, 2008 6:07 pm
… i love you guys, but do you think that you can start making all your links open in a new window … ?
that would be lovely seeing that you always have 50+ links on one posting …just something to ponder .
- 26February 26th, 2008 6:29 pm
Here is an example of an “experimental solution” that makes great use of papervision3d.
- 27February 26th, 2008 7:08 pm
The menu of this site is very different and beautiful: http://www.bambubali.com.br
- 28February 26th, 2008 7:33 pm
That Nickad menu is really hard to use. :/
- 29February 26th, 2008 8:09 pm
We from enilsson use the vertical tabs as well… very interesting concept.
- 30February 26th, 2008 9:25 pm
I keep saying ‘how beautiful they are’ – some of them, of course.. really inspire me.
- 31February 26th, 2008 10:10 pm
Great assembly as usual. Some go into making it really difficult and adventurous for the viewer to find his/her way, but I guess if that is the name of the game, so be it!
Seeing some of the horizontal navigation tabs write ‘downward’ is (mostly) not reader friendly. Bottom up with base of font closer to the reader is what gives best readability.
- 32February 26th, 2008 11:16 pm
I am more of a horizontal menu bar with the hover effect matching the nav buttons to the rest. Vertical navigation just gives me a hard time.
- 33
- 34February 27th, 2008 1:02 am
Nice collection guys..
- 35February 27th, 2008 1:34 am
just superb!
- 36February 27th, 2008 1:35 am
The mac style applied to a Geographic Information Service Web Application is very pleasant : http://www.metis-light.com
This GIS Web Application is still under development (visual problems under IE…). - 37February 27th, 2008 2:32 am
Hey Keri, it looks like the “Timothy Sykes” site is using “jQuery”. A collection of various javascripts and a base collection of code for use on your websites. The effect is called “lava lamp”. I’ve seen it before and found that I liked how it looked and reacted too! Here is a link to where you can see the lava lamp code explained and there are some examples at the bottom of the page, one like the “Sykes” menu. http://www.gmarwaha.com/blog/?p=7
- 38
- 39February 27th, 2008 2:40 am
Great inspirational collection! Also noticing the (small) trend in horizontal scrolling websites, not quite sure how I feel about this…guess it works in some situations.
- 40February 27th, 2008 3:09 am
I think some of the ‘overly designed’ navigation completely miss the point of what navigation is supposed to be used for. What is the point of hiding the navigation??
- 41February 27th, 2008 3:26 am
another awesome collection!
- 42February 27th, 2008 3:30 am
Great collection, fantastic inspiration!
Thank you!
- 43February 27th, 2008 4:01 am
Very timely indeed. I was just thinking about redoing my own menus. Certainly bucket-loads of inspiration above. Many thanks SM.
- 44February 27th, 2008 4:08 am
@rayelle I totally agree: Some of those navigation concepts are overdone.
Navigation is crucial for a website, because you don’t have sheets to turn. But in any case the content is the reason to visit your website.
Thank you for the elaborated collection – it’s interesting to see common principles, even if they might be critical or need discussion. That’s we’re on a blog…
- 45February 27th, 2008 5:46 am
Fantastic! Thank you for this!
- 46February 27th, 2008 7:12 am
Defign4Fun is my favorite! Dunno how he did it, but it works!
- 47February 27th, 2008 9:37 am
Very good. I hope more people will use these ideas.
- 48February 27th, 2008 4:44 pm
Funny seeing the steven holl website on the list.
The page is a great improvement from his last one but i think it could use larger letters.
Also after you navigate away from the main page the navigation gets annoying in my opinion. - 49February 27th, 2008 11:36 pm
Nice collection. Useful. Hope people will buy these ideas!
- 50February 28th, 2008 12:28 am
this collection is useful to collect new ideas!
thanks! - 51February 28th, 2008 12:55 am
Cool collections…was dreaming in blend of color they use..
- 52February 28th, 2008 1:23 am
Thanks, great posts!
- 53February 28th, 2008 2:18 am
Outstanding.
- 54February 28th, 2008 2:26 am
wonderful portfolio of ideas … :)
thx for that - 55February 28th, 2008 5:22 am
Ya know, smashing magazine really pisses me off. Every time I read a post this good I get really frustrated and start thinking “do I have to redo my site” and “is my site good enough?” I have to stop and take a couple deep breaths and put everything back into perspective. That typography poster article is still haunting me because some of the design is so fresh.
- 56February 28th, 2008 7:35 am
I love the content you offer. One suggestion however; it would be much easier if you could code the links to open up in a new window or tab versus the parent page. That way I could review the content and easily return to your page and pick back up where I left off. Anyway, keep up the good work. It is always nice to see relevant content.
- 57
- 58February 28th, 2008 11:51 am
This really is the best site ever. It really helps with ideas. Keep them coming!
- 59February 28th, 2008 5:40 pm
Very nice collection… i like them especially mac type navigations… thanks.
- 60February 28th, 2008 10:46 pm
Great source of inspiration for the designer with a heavy workload!
vertical tabs can’t be live text, so there are accessibility and updateability issues. You need a very good reason to go to the vertical menu!!
- 61February 28th, 2008 11:58 pm
That’s a great resource of different navigations. Many of them are really beautiful.
I will bookmark this page to get inspiration when I need it. - 62February 29th, 2008 12:40 am
Nice collection!
- 63February 29th, 2008 2:35 am
While some of them look good, we also need to admit that many of them are a usability nightmare…
- 64February 29th, 2008 5:19 am
Thank you for this list. It’s awesome.
“1. Trend toward “speaking” block navigation” I have seen these styles during the [dot com bubble].
What it was was the 2 language combination, both horizontal and vertical navigation styles.
However, the idea of speaking navigation is the trend… - 65February 29th, 2008 10:15 am
yeah… great article with many very nice ideas for me. Example 2 is similar like here: Restaurant zenSuR.
thank you for your great job
From Germany
Ralph
- 66February 29th, 2008 10:18 am
Awesome design tips! Thanks a lot!
- 67March 1st, 2008 4:36 am
very usefull article
thank you for your effort
the vertical navigation is hard to read as you said and it’s not suitable for common use
NIckad and the playground blues menus are the worse because it’s not cross browser compatible and you can easily miss it
but you put other great resources for grea ideas
thank you - 68March 1st, 2008 7:37 am
Some of these concepts are great, unfortunatelythe coding is kind ofcrap on a few of them they don’t work on my MAC :(
- 69March 2nd, 2008 7:11 pm
Great collection :) I like them! Good work!
- 70March 4th, 2008 1:48 am
Hmm .. Nice collection with a good overview. I guess that finding the right solution is a simple matter of planning the design thoroughly through first. Vertical tabs are pretty nifty as the save space, that can be used way more intelligent, but as they’re harder to read, the typography and usage is important. I’m thinking of using some in one of our systems as a test .. (it’s just css, so why not try it ..) :D
- 71March 4th, 2008 3:15 am
Can someone explain me how i can realise a menu like the digitalartifex.com guys?
I am sure there is a complete solution somewhere in the internet. - 72March 5th, 2008 8:04 am
I’m not sure whether your comments are valid as , with all due respect, your site is an absolute mess.
- 73March 6th, 2008 6:41 am
Nice list. Although there seems to be a lot of people missing the point of articles like this – someone mentioned that all sites should use breadcrumbs for navigation…are you serious?! Experimentation is the only way to truly move forward and lists like this one show what is possible.
I think it’s worth noting that a large proportion of the more experimental navs are on designers sites who are showing that they’re capable of thinking outside the box. A lot of clients are looking for creativity so in these instances I think it’s entirely justifiable to have something less mainstream (as long as it stil works of course!)
Just wanted to say that I really like the ’speaking’ buttons style, there’s nothing worse than ambiguous navigation – and I bet it doesn’t hurt your page rankings either, aren’t descriptive links what Google are all about?
- 74March 6th, 2008 7:05 am
really good list. Thanks!
- 75March 6th, 2008 9:57 am
Great collection ! Man thanks for another great post !
- 76March 7th, 2008 7:46 am
Lovely round-up – I never knew that I had come to hate some styles of navigation so much. However lots of tasty ideas here too…
- 77March 8th, 2008 3:24 pm
Some beautiful navs there, just in process of redesigning my site and was goign to use javascript to make it more interesting but now I’m thinking it’s just not needed.
- 78March 11th, 2008 8:46 am
Real Gud ones..
thanks a lot Smashing..u guys are real SMASHING…..
- 79March 15th, 2008 9:14 am
This page it’s really cool… these nav menu exemplos help me a lot .
Good work! - 80March 19th, 2008 8:40 am
I am a fan of the ’speaking block’ navigation. There’s no better user experience than one where it feels the designer is holding your hand as you walk through the website.
- 81March 25th, 2008 2:41 pm
I think the mac button is not css. I reckon it is done in photoshop because as you can see in the button, it has a little bit gradient. You can do it in CSS but not perfectly look like what you can see in Mac Button and 1 more thing it should be web safe color. I suggest you to do it in Photoshop and use javascript for hovering the button.
- 82April 1st, 2008 5:25 pm
very good!thanks
- 83April 2nd, 2008 4:49 am
i really admire those authors who designed these works.
so i think no matter whether it is popular still,
at least it is art we appreciate. - 84April 2nd, 2008 7:10 pm
they are are very good designers.. nice one!
- 85April 3rd, 2008 5:52 pm
Oh, wow, thanks for the list! Gave me some ideas for my navigation. Man, menus are a pain in the ass…
- 86April 7th, 2008 10:08 pm
FAO: im suden
It’s all very well quoting or linking to Jakob Neilsons site, but useable or not his site is incredibly ugly. In fact the content is so lacking in structure as to actually hinder useability – which content is important? Where do I look first? Why do I have to scroll to see some of the top level navigation?
Laughable really.
If you don’t believe there is any room for aesthetics in websites then why on earth come to a site that celebrates design?
- 87April 11th, 2008 4:43 am
Good study of navigation design.
very good. - 88April 12th, 2008 2:52 pm
It’s all good stuff but I still like normal, traditional navigation.
- 89April 16th, 2008 5:13 pm
to the author of the article:
what metrics do you have (other than the Apple example) that convince you that these are all sound UIs?
- 90April 17th, 2008 1:27 am
very cool collections…
My wishes to al those who ahve worked on this appealing set of navigation - 91
- 92April 29th, 2008 9:29 pm
Very nice collections and also very helpful for designers……..
- 93May 4th, 2008 6:35 pm
I love you more than i can do
- 94May 19th, 2008 11:03 am
Perfect flash menu
It’s online builder. You can create drop down or accordion menus or download component. - 95May 27th, 2008 1:35 pm
hi,
how can we use these theme?
I would like a theme like the site “guide de prague”. - 96June 4th, 2008 7:09 am
thank you…
- 97June 11th, 2008 5:10 am
thanks you
- 98June 13th, 2008 12:31 am
thank you wery much
- 99June 13th, 2008 7:17 am
Uhh… “mystery meat navigation”… menu options with sound effects.. I remember using those back in the 90s (and dropping them really fast)
Excellent list, as usual, thanx! - 100June 17th, 2008 9:42 pm
I hate vertical type. People read left to right, not up and down so i find this approach to navigation a little dodgey. Makes you want to tilt your head to the left so you can read it properly. I don’t foresee me ever using vertical type on anything. I think it is the worst thing ever.
- 101June 29th, 2008 11:10 am
I never seen this kind of navigation menu!
very very nice…
thanks for it. - 102July 29th, 2008 11:24 am
buttons is very nice :D
- 103August 8th, 2008 2:23 am
Many thanks for sharing. i really needed some inspiration for navigation design so thanks!
- 104August 25th, 2008 3:13 am
This is such a wonderful article, thanks for all the examples you’ve provided. Some of them are really beautiful :)
- 105September 7th, 2008 8:06 am
Doe anyone know of a way in WordPress to dynamically create a page list like what is shown in the first trend? I know I could use a custom field to create the subtitle, the problem is then listing it and the page title with a custom query.
- 106September 22nd, 2008 7:49 pm
excellent compilation of thanks
- 107October 2nd, 2008 6:29 am
That’s a really nice list, thank you :) It’s just a shame that the gotocss3.com site is no more – I really love that menu design and wanted to see more :(
- 108October 12th, 2008 9:12 pm
it is realy great designs on this site…… this is very helpfull site for web designers…iam a web designer so i am very happy now ! thank you “SMASHINMAGAZINE”….
- 109November 23rd, 2008 7:48 pm
Your screenshots are not showing.
- 110November 26th, 2008 11:16 pm
Very interesting subject
- 111December 1st, 2008 3:33 am
>while it’s cool, NickAd’s site navigation raises my anxiety levels.
My experience exactly. Frightening really. And the bass throb made me too anxious to actually keep navigating further!
As to this page as a whole with examples: a nice collection of work and helped with a little (well somewhat large) problem I had on a present project. Thanks for the effort in compiling all of these – must’ve taken quite some time! :)
- 112January 2nd, 2009 3:17 am
Cool collections, thanks.
- 113January 20th, 2009 11:33 pm
Cool
- 114January 21st, 2009 5:15 am
This article is really amazing! Well structured and a true source of inspiration for every web design! I use it for my day to day design. Thanks!
- 115January 21st, 2009 9:43 pm
This is truly exceptional inspiration and all around great work! Thank you so much for the work you put into this Smashing Magazine!
- 116January 22nd, 2009 6:40 am
Thanks for presenting this intriguing collection!
- 117January 22nd, 2009 10:25 pm
i am so impressed with your site and all the collections your bring to this site. Thank you so much for inspiring me with your hard work.
- 118January 25th, 2009 7:36 pm
another sample for the ‘creative / icon’ navigation. I think it works really well. intuitive.
boxmodel.ca
take a look. - 119February 10th, 2009 8:56 pm
nice thanks!
- 120March 28th, 2009 9:21 am
Cool Ideas. Great for inspiration. I visit this page everytime I design a navigation menu.
- 121April 6th, 2009 5:47 am
Hi there, does anyone know a good tutorial for speaking buttons navigation? I have tried it with only text and css but when going mouseover it won’t highlight the full button, only for example “home” and not the subtext.
I have seen quite cool navigation menu’s but I good tutorial for such speaking navigation menu’s is hard to find…
- 122June 2nd, 2009 4:29 pm
This certainly is timely for. For a little while now, I had been on the look out for navigation inspiration – Viola, this turns up!
- 123June 12th, 2009 4:39 am
Really nice collection! Thanks.
- 124June 24th, 2009 10:28 pm
This is excellent work..
Thanks - 125June 26th, 2009 9:55 am
Great list. Small typo in Polkdesign entry: calend
ear - 126July 19th, 2009 7:14 pm
Really inspiring!
- 127September 22nd, 2009 11:29 pm
i found a cool navigation on the webdesign portfolio from the berlin webdesigner michael seiler-gerstmann. amazing^^
- 128October 1st, 2009 8:36 pm
Check out this cool navigation from INVIVIA
http://www.microsoft.com/servicesIts a hybrid tab-breadcrumb navigation.
- 129October 5th, 2009 12:27 pm
This is a very interesting and useful article! I’ll bring to my next web design class!
- 130October 8th, 2009 6:33 am
Here comes a Step by Step Menu
http://www.vision.to/step-by-step-menu-a-wizard-lke-single-image.php - 131November 8th, 2009 9:03 pm
Really very nice collection
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- @HrvojeKC yes, that's an interesting idea. Maybe when the waiting is over, we'll write a detailed post about it.
- @benbeltran thanks, Ben, your support means a lot to us.
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I dont think mac style is still popular…
My fav: letters-numbers.com