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.
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February 26th, 2008 10:24 amVery nice collection again. Thank you…
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February 26th, 2008 10:37 amI’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.
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February 26th, 2008 10:37 amReally like cobahair.co.uk. A great list. Thanx.
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February 26th, 2008 10:39 amI 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!
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February 26th, 2008 10:40 amNice collection, thanks…
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February 26th, 2008 10:41 amReally nice collection! Thanks.
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February 26th, 2008 11:05 amMost 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.
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February 26th, 2008 11:21 amNice collection!
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February 26th, 2008 11:45 amI 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 ?
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February 26th, 2008 11:49 amYou 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.
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February 26th, 2008 11:59 amvery 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.
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February 26th, 2008 12:00 pmNice collection, thanks for share.
By the way… hellocolor.com link doesn’t work. I think you forget the “http://” - 14
February 26th, 2008 12:09 pmVery nice collection!
Thanks. - 15
February 26th, 2008 1:41 pmI 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
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February 26th, 2008 3:09 pmwhile it’s cool, NickAd’s site navigation raises my anxiety levels.
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February 26th, 2008 3:28 pmNice selection of menus there, made me feel like I’d better pull my finger out and sort mine now.
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February 26th, 2008 3:44 pmGreat selection as usual!
I love the pink one, it could looks nice on my weblog. :) - 20
February 26th, 2008 3:55 pmVery nice collection
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February 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:]
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February 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.
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February 26th, 2008 4:41 pmVery nice collection. I like the experimental solutions, some of them really stands out!
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February 26th, 2008 5:13 pmFun 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.
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February 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 .
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February 26th, 2008 6:29 pmHere is an example of an “experimental solution” that makes great use of papervision3d.
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February 26th, 2008 7:08 pmThe menu of this site is very different and beautiful: http://www.bambubali.com.br
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February 26th, 2008 7:33 pmThat Nickad menu is really hard to use. :/
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February 26th, 2008 8:09 pmWe from enilsson use the vertical tabs as well… very interesting concept.
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February 26th, 2008 9:25 pmI keep saying ‘how beautiful they are’ – some of them, of course.. really inspire me.
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February 26th, 2008 10:10 pmGreat 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.
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February 26th, 2008 11:16 pmI 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.
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February 27th, 2008 1:02 amNice collection guys..
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February 27th, 2008 1:34 amjust superb!
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February 27th, 2008 1:35 amThe 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…). - 37
February 27th, 2008 2:32 amHey 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
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February 27th, 2008 2:40 amGreat 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.
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February 27th, 2008 3:09 amI 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??
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February 27th, 2008 3:26 amanother awesome collection!
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February 27th, 2008 3:30 amGreat collection, fantastic inspiration!
Thank you!
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February 27th, 2008 4:01 amVery timely indeed. I was just thinking about redoing my own menus. Certainly bucket-loads of inspiration above. Many thanks SM.
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February 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…
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February 27th, 2008 5:46 amFantastic! Thank you for this!
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February 27th, 2008 7:12 amDefign4Fun is my favorite! Dunno how he did it, but it works!
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February 27th, 2008 9:37 amVery good. I hope more people will use these ideas.
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February 27th, 2008 4:44 pmFunny 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. - 49
February 27th, 2008 11:36 pmNice collection. Useful. Hope people will buy these ideas!
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February 28th, 2008 12:28 amthis collection is useful to collect new ideas!
thanks! - 51
February 28th, 2008 12:55 amCool collections…was dreaming in blend of color they use..
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February 28th, 2008 1:23 amThanks, great posts!
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February 28th, 2008 2:18 amOutstanding.
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February 28th, 2008 2:26 amwonderful portfolio of ideas … :)
thx for that - 55
February 28th, 2008 5:22 amYa 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.
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February 28th, 2008 7:35 amI 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.
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February 28th, 2008 11:51 amThis really is the best site ever. It really helps with ideas. Keep them coming!
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February 28th, 2008 5:40 pmVery nice collection… i like them especially mac type navigations… thanks.
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February 28th, 2008 10:46 pmGreat 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!!
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February 28th, 2008 11:58 pmThat’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. - 62
February 29th, 2008 12:40 amNice collection!
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February 29th, 2008 2:35 amWhile some of them look good, we also need to admit that many of them are a usability nightmare…
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February 29th, 2008 5:19 amThank 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… - 65
February 29th, 2008 10:15 amyeah… 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
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February 29th, 2008 10:18 amAwesome design tips! Thanks a lot!
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March 1st, 2008 4:36 amvery 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 - 68
March 1st, 2008 7:37 amSome of these concepts are great, unfortunatelythe coding is kind ofcrap on a few of them they don’t work on my MAC :(
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March 2nd, 2008 7:11 pmGreat collection :) I like them! Good work!
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March 4th, 2008 1:48 amHmm .. 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
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March 4th, 2008 3:15 amCan 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. - 72
March 5th, 2008 8:04 amI’m not sure whether your comments are valid as , with all due respect, your site is an absolute mess.
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March 6th, 2008 6:41 amNice 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?
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March 6th, 2008 7:05 amreally good list. Thanks!
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March 6th, 2008 9:57 amGreat collection ! Man thanks for another great post !
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March 7th, 2008 7:46 amLovely round-up – I never knew that I had come to hate some styles of navigation so much. However lots of tasty ideas here too…
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March 8th, 2008 3:24 pmSome 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.
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March 11th, 2008 8:46 amReal Gud ones..
thanks a lot Smashing..u guys are real SMASHING…..
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March 15th, 2008 9:14 amThis page it’s really cool… these nav menu exemplos help me a lot .
Good work! - 80
March 19th, 2008 8:40 amI 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.
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March 25th, 2008 2:41 pmI 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.
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April 1st, 2008 5:25 pmvery good!thanks
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April 2nd, 2008 4:49 ami 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. - 84
April 2nd, 2008 7:10 pmthey are are very good designers.. nice one!
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April 3rd, 2008 5:52 pmOh, wow, thanks for the list! Gave me some ideas for my navigation. Man, menus are a pain in the ass…
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April 7th, 2008 10:08 pmFAO: 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?
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April 11th, 2008 4:43 amGood study of navigation design.
very good. - 88
April 12th, 2008 2:52 pmIt’s all good stuff but I still like normal, traditional navigation.
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April 16th, 2008 5:13 pmto the author of the article:
what metrics do you have (other than the Apple example) that convince you that these are all sound UIs?
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April 17th, 2008 1:27 amvery cool collections…
My wishes to al those who ahve worked on this appealing set of navigation - 91

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April 29th, 2008 9:29 pmVery nice collections and also very helpful for designers……..
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May 4th, 2008 6:35 pmI love you more than i can do
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May 19th, 2008 11:03 amPerfect flash menu
It’s online builder. You can create drop down or accordion menus or download component. - 95
May 27th, 2008 1:35 pmhi,
how can we use these theme?
I would like a theme like the site “guide de prague”. - 96
June 4th, 2008 7:09 amthank you…
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June 11th, 2008 5:10 amthanks you
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June 13th, 2008 12:31 amthank you wery much
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June 13th, 2008 7:17 amUhh… “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! - 100
June 17th, 2008 9:42 pmI 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.
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June 29th, 2008 11:10 amI never seen this kind of navigation menu!
very very nice…
thanks for it. - 102
July 29th, 2008 11:24 ambuttons is very nice :D
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August 8th, 2008 2:23 amMany thanks for sharing. i really needed some inspiration for navigation design so thanks!
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August 25th, 2008 3:13 amThis is such a wonderful article, thanks for all the examples you’ve provided. Some of them are really beautiful :)
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September 7th, 2008 8:06 amDoe 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.
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September 22nd, 2008 7:49 pmexcellent compilation of thanks
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October 2nd, 2008 6:29 amThat’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 :(
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October 12th, 2008 9:12 pmit 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”….
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November 23rd, 2008 7:48 pmYour screenshots are not showing.
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November 26th, 2008 11:16 pmVery interesting subject
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December 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! :)
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January 2nd, 2009 3:17 amCool collections, thanks.
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January 20th, 2009 11:33 pmCool
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January 21st, 2009 5:15 amThis 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!
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January 21st, 2009 9:43 pmThis is truly exceptional inspiration and all around great work! Thank you so much for the work you put into this Smashing Magazine!
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January 22nd, 2009 6:40 amThanks for presenting this intriguing collection!
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January 22nd, 2009 10:25 pmi 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.
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January 25th, 2009 7:36 pmanother sample for the ‘creative / icon’ navigation. I think it works really well. intuitive.
boxmodel.ca
take a look. - 119
February 10th, 2009 8:56 pmnice thanks!
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March 28th, 2009 9:21 amCool Ideas. Great for inspiration. I visit this page everytime I design a navigation menu.
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April 6th, 2009 5:47 amHi 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…
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June 2nd, 2009 4:29 pmThis certainly is timely for. For a little while now, I had been on the look out for navigation inspiration – Viola, this turns up!
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June 12th, 2009 4:39 amReally nice collection! Thanks.
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June 24th, 2009 10:28 pmThis is excellent work..
Thanks - 125
June 26th, 2009 9:55 amGreat list. Small typo in Polkdesign entry: calend
ear - 126
July 19th, 2009 7:14 pmReally inspiring!
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September 22nd, 2009 11:29 pmi found a cool navigation on the webdesign portfolio from the berlin webdesigner michael seiler-gerstmann. amazing^^
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October 1st, 2009 8:36 pmCheck out this cool navigation from INVIVIA
http://www.microsoft.com/servicesIts a hybrid tab-breadcrumb navigation.
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October 5th, 2009 12:27 pmThis is a very interesting and useful article! I’ll bring to my next web design class!
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October 8th, 2009 6:33 amHere comes a Step by Step Menu
http://www.vision.to/step-by-step-menu-a-wizard-lke-single-image.php - 131
November 8th, 2009 9:03 pmReally very nice collection
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December 1st, 2009 5:25 amCreative and Innovative collection of navigation menus…………really inspiring and impressive……………i like ur collection always………..
thanks for giving great ideas and designs………………..
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January 2nd, 2010 4:41 pmSorry, some of this stuff is akin to installing a door in the ceiling and forcing people to climb hoops and ladders just to get through it. (”Nickad” should be banned from the internet.)
Thinking outside the box means more than just replacing tried and true navigation with pointlessly convoluted scripts and jumbled Flash abortions. Apple thinks outside the box all the time, but they tend to make sure their creations are something people can actually use at the end of the day.
I expected more from a site focused on solid, progressive web design!
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January 9th, 2010 4:46 amJust wanted to thank you for this. We’ve used some of the menu info on here for both
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January 19th, 2010 12:40 amIt’s awesome collection…..I like most of the design……thanks…..
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January 30th, 2010 12:17 pmNormally I’m not a fan of Flash but I must say that the nickad.com site blew me away. Awesome.
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I dont think mac style is still popular…
My fav: letters-numbers.com