50 Beautiful And User-Friendly Navigation Menus
Usability is an essential goal of any website, and usable navigation is something every website needs. It determines where users are led and how they interact with the website. Without usable navigation, content becomes all but useless. Menus need to be simple enough for the user to understand, but also contain the elements necessary to guide the user through the website — with some creativity and good design thrown in.
Below we present over 50 excellent navigation menus — we feature CSS-based design solutions, CSS+JavaScript-based menus and Flash-designs. However, they all have something in common: they are user-friendly yet creative and perfectly fit to the style of their respective websites.
Please also consider our previous articles:
- CSS-Based Navigation Menus: Modern Solutions, which lists modern solutions for CSS-based navigation.
- Navigation Menus: Trends and Examples is an inspirational collection of navigation menus.
1. CSS-Based Navigation Menus
Loodo
A colorful menu that adds to the feel of the website.
Acko.net
Steven Wittens takes a look at the navigation menu from a quite unusual perspective.
Web Design Ledger
Web Design Ledger has an excellent menu; its large size is convenient but doesn’t intrude on the content.
UX Booth
UX Booth uses a a stylish text box under the navigation as a sort of subtext for each menu item.
Nopokographics
Vertical navigation menus are used very rarely, for the simple reason: they are harder to use. However, some designers risk unusual approaches. Nopoko Graphics uses an arrow and a hover-effect for its vertical navigation menu.
Icon Designer
This website uses a large image-based menu on the home page. The user’s attention is drawn directly to this large menu, making it convenient for users.
Cosmicsoda
This large and colorful menu is very noticeable and uses a slight hover effect to further define the menu items.
Designsensory
An intuitive drop-down navigation that uses 2 colors effectively to communicate the active navigation item and the passive ones.
Smallstone
Smallstone, a U.S. record label, presents its navigation menu in the form of a the so-called Space Echo Roland SE-201.
TNVacation
It’s pretty hard to find a nice-looking drop-down menu. This one is a beautiful exception.
Clearleft
Clearleft uses a couple of paper pieces for its navigation.
45royale
A simple, clean and beautiful navigation with a nice hover effect.
Design Intellection
An excellent example of block navigation that shows how effectively “speaking” hover effects can be used with a clean and simple navigation menu.
Ronnypries.de
A navigation menu doesn’t have to look like a traditional navigation menu. Ronny Pries uses a floor plan to lead site visitors through the pages of the site.
Jiri Tvrdek
Jiri Tvrdek presents the navigation options of his site as leaves on a tree. Creative, unusual and memorable.
Water’s Edge Media
Patricia Abbott uses clothespins for the navigation options.
Matt Dempsey
Matt Dempsey highlights his navigation options with a brush stroke.
Cognigen
The current navigation option is pressed — clear and intuitive.
District Solutions
Vertical tabs are used very rarely. But they can look good!
Jayme Blackmon
Jayme Blackmon seems to like setting “done”-marks…
Jeff Sarmiento
Why not try a sloping navigation options once in a while?
Studioracket
A really unusual navigation menu that uses some kind of a mindmap to illustrate the navigation. And, apart from that, the navigation menu is hand-drawn!
Cultured Code
A subtle yet distinct menu that is out of the way of content. Excellent colors and a nice hover effect also add to the menu.
Nando Designer
This Portuguese designers uses handwriting and a piece of paper for its main navigation.
Bonfiremedia
Sometimes typography is just enough…
Artgeex
Vivid typography in use.
Gloobs
Some designers integrate a stamp in the contact navigation option.
South Creative
This website uses large navigation buttons and has a good hover effect.
Mac Rabbit
One more example of a large and clean menu. This one uses icons to aid the reader in recognizing each item’s function.
RapidWeaver
This menu has a clean and smooth layout, and it has a great sub-menu that uses transparency to separate it from the main menu.
DFW UPA
Icons reinforce the menu items on this website and add emphasis to each option.
Revolution Driving Tuition
This website has a great grunge style, and the menu fits right into the layout.
Duarte Pires
This menu is located close to the content, where it is easy to use. It uses large icons, which adds a visual element to the navigation. Also, the menu on other pages uses the same icons in a vertical layout, bringing consistency to the website. The icons may not fit perfectly, but it’s a nice idea.
Valetin Agachi
This navigation has a rather unique style that emphasizes selected items. Also, the menu layout stays consistent throughout the whole website.
Tutorial9
Tutorial9 recently got a nice redesign, which came with a very usable and well-organized menu.
2. CSS Menus With JavaScript
Agami Creative
Designers sometimes use tooltips for their navigation. However, tooltips and aqua are quite an unusual combination.
Whitehouse.gov
A perfect example of how one should organize huge amounts of content into clear and easily distinguishable sections. Also, excellent design of the drop-down menu.
AppStorm
AppStorm is a new website by Envato. A jQuery effect is used to create an excellent and very usable drop-down menu.
Eric Johansson
Eric Johansson, a designer from Sweden, uses tall vertical blocks and images for his navigation.
Coda
This conveniently located menu has a beautiful hover effect. The sub-menus are consistent and include every item.
Dragon Interactive
Dragon Interactive has a colorful jQuery-based menu with a great effect.
Bern
I am a big fan of this navigation layout. I like how the menu fits in with the grunge theme. It also uses another jQuery drop-down effect.
Abduzeedo
For its recent redesign, Abduzeedo introduced a jQuery slider into the navigation.
3. Flash-Based Menus
Iipvapi
Colorful sloping Flash-based navgation from an Indian Web design agency.
Not Forgotten: The Movie
Most entertainment websites use Flash and unusual navigation menus to capture users’ attention. On this one, an instant classic, navigation items are put on cards.
Nick Tones
Nick Tones, with a dynamic, colorful and yet still somehow usable navigation menu.
woonky.ideas
This Argentinian design agency puts CDs and books on a table, each representing a navigation option, of course. When hovered over with a mouse, each object reveals what can be found inside.
Gotmilk
The designers of this Flash-based site came up with something truly original. The navigation menu is put on a ribbon; each navigation item has a nice and simple hover-effect: when an icon is hovered, it is replaced with the site area the icon stands for. Usually tooltips are used for this puprose, here designers use a different approach. Outstanding!
Spectra Visual Newsreader
A beautiful and very colorful Flash menu that is a good example of excellent usability.
NickAD
This unique website is all about easy-to-use navigation.
Sensi Soft
This amazing portfolio has very well-thought out and convenient navigation.
4. Highly Usable Navigation
tap tap tap
This website has a beautiful layout and a menu with great effects.
Apple
Apple has one of the more exceptional websites, particularly because of the navigation layout. The Mac menu is quite amazing. With images, it couldn’t be easier to find items and move through the menu.
Alex Buga
Visitors here use a large and well-laid out slider to move through news items.
CREASENSO
The content on the home page of this portfolio website has an extremely simple yet usable organization.
polargold
This visually stunning Flash-based portfolio uses an accordion-like layout for the content, so there is no loading of new pages. The large type stresses the importance of menu items.
Colourpixel
Colourpixel has a very interesting layout for its portfolio. It combines all of its sections onto a single page, and allows each item to be hidden or revealed, as demanded by the user.
DVEIN
Yet another excellent Flash-based portfolio. This website organizes all gallery items onto an interesting revolving list.
Alexandru Cohaniuc
This portfolio is rather well known for its beautiful layout. An accordion effect allows users to navigate through projects and portfolio items.
Porsche Canada
Porsche Canada’s website has very user-friendly navigation, with many sub-items for each menu item. The convenience and usability of this menu is great.
Jeremy Levine Design
This architecture portfolio has a unique layout that allows users to easily browse the website. The line of menu items has many effects and transitions that make it very convenient.
firstborn
Firstborn, a well-known design studio, uses scrollable, horizontal navigation for its portfolio. The navigation items can also be displayed in other modes, such as thumbnails, making it even better.
Benjamin David
This portfolio has a vertical slider that automatically moves through menu items. Many large items are placed together in a single glowing menu.
Thibaud’s Portfolio
Another stunning portfolio with creative navigation, this one with Flash-based “color samples” to choose from. Like items are grouped together.
Jason Reed Web Design
Accordions are useful when trying to squeeze many items into a small space. Jason Reed used a stylish accordion in his portfolio to allow users to navigate pages.
Marius Roosendaal
Another usable accordion menu that groups portfolio items.
5. Vertical Navigation Layouts
Danny Blackman
Danny Blackman’s website is often regarded as one of the better portfolios out there, in part because of the amazing vertical layout.
Tomas Pojeta
This website is yet another portfolio that uses a vertical layout to incorporate multiple pages onto one, while allowing users to move vertically between sections.
volll
Volll uses a vertical layout with a beautiful illustrated landscape background.
Mediocore
Mediocore is an awesome portfolio. It has a few more elements than usual on its pages, but still looks excellent.
6. User-Friendly Sidebar Menus
FreelanceSwitch
FreelanceSwitch organizes its articles using a great menu.
Fubiz
The redesign of Fubiz brings an excellent sidebar. Slide effects are used to fit a large amount of content into a small sidebar.
Checkout
Checkout has a stunning website. An extremely clean list-style menu in the features section also displays nice icons.
Ruby Tuesday
Ruby Tuesday has a very nice website. The sidebar menu has exceptional icons and smooth hover effects.
Concentric Studio
A simple and minimalist menu with sliding effects.
Barack Obama
President Obama’s website has a well-spaced and nicely contrasting list-style sidebar menu.
GABBO DESIGN
Another clean and well-spaced list menu.
Further Resources
You may be further interested in these articles and related resources:
- Pattern Tap Navigation Collection
A nice collection of inspiring navigation menus. - 13 Awesome Javascript CSS Menus
13 useful JavaScript CSS menu resources. - 7 Advanced CSS Menu, A Great Roundup!
Another 7 CSS menu resources from noupe. - 300+ jQuery, CSS, MooTools and JavaScript navigation menus
A long list of menu resources, tutorials and downloads.
(al)
Jordan Moore
February 4th, 2009 4:00 pmSome very inspiring examples here, particularly the listed items on Ruby Tuesdays!
Buffface
February 4th, 2009 4:03 pmIf that is Dan Wolgers’ web site, then who is that “Eric Johansson” of the title bar and contact pages? Dude..
OnWebDev
February 4th, 2009 4:14 pmCongratulations Matt! You’ve made a really extensive research! Very inspirational…There are some crazy and creative solutions out there…Somehow the simple ones really stand out in their own way…
I really like Jayme Blackmon’s done-marks menu…Genius! :)
Jason Reed
February 4th, 2009 4:15 pmThanks for including my site! While browsing for some inspiration, I was pleasantly surprised to find it here amongst some really great sites.
DKumar M.
February 4th, 2009 4:18 pmNice Collection Matt…. Thanks for putting all of them together !!
Now one can fine navigation menus related inspiration in one place ;) Again Thanks for sharing!!
DKumar M.
Ryan Plesko
February 4th, 2009 4:29 pmThanks for the nod to DFW UPA! Navigation was something that I wanted to make sure was quick and easy to understand and follow. Great list – awesome inspiration – proud to be a part of it. Thank you.
Chris Sanders
February 4th, 2009 4:33 pmThese are some great finds, thank you for taking the time to share these with everyone.
chiefwakambi
February 4th, 2009 4:50 pmWow, very much appreciate. This will takes days to try it. Valuable links. Thank You.
Klaye Morrison
February 4th, 2009 4:58 pmGreat list! Thanks guys.
Curt Simon Harlinghausen
February 4th, 2009 5:18 pmGreat article. Inspiration and nice collection.
Sneh
February 4th, 2009 6:05 pmAwesome and extensive collection! Great work Matt. These are really inspirational.
Ben
February 4th, 2009 6:08 pmVery nice! Great to see some Flash sites too. :)
jojobaoil
February 4th, 2009 6:14 pmThanks You.~
Austin
February 4th, 2009 6:15 pmGreat list, although some of them seem pretty standard…
katie
February 4th, 2009 7:06 pmWhat a great resource! And I was really surprised to find one (smallstone) very similar to the banner in my blog – katiepalm.squarespace.com. Now I wish I could figure out how to make the knobs work on mine!
Juliet van Ree
February 4th, 2009 7:35 pmGood post!
mary
February 4th, 2009 7:42 pmThe showcase is beautiful but the title is misleading.
These are “beautiful” navigation menus but not necessarily user-friendly. In fact, most of the entries here are less user-friendly than, say, the navigation of gmail. Also take note that the entries under CSS-based menus are mostly image-menus, not really-CSS-powered. Let’s not argue about CSS sprites, etc. The fact remains that they’re wow-factor is based on the use of metaphor/imagery and not really color contrast and typography (using CSS).
The CSS-based menus that aren’t image-intensive but manage to be user-friendly may be Gabbo Design, Concentric Studio, Medio Core (which looks a lot like smashingmagazine’s menu, by the way).
I’m not bashing the post, I agree that they’re all beautiful and yes, you can manage to have beautiful AND user-friendly navigation menus, but this showcase is more of a beautiful navigation showcase.
Brian Gottier
February 4th, 2009 7:57 pmThat smallstone.com menu is pretty sweet
deepakd
February 4th, 2009 9:13 pmNice stuff. Useful but looks too jazzy could be nice if there are more professional works are included. Most of the above mentioned sites comes under the personal portfolio categories.
Musings
February 4th, 2009 9:26 pmSome really nice finds! Alexcohaniuc, Studioracket, Nickad, Colourpixel, they’re quite creative! But like Mary, user-friendliness is a debatable issue, but I guess ultimately it will depend on the target audience to whom the site caters to!
gaurav
February 4th, 2009 10:38 pmLoads of information will take some time to digest them all
Great post
Creamy CSS
February 4th, 2009 11:35 pmReally nice list! :) Good job!
Pete
February 5th, 2009 12:56 amAlthough the couple of examples you’ve put up may be pretty, I wouldn’t consider any type of vertical text to be user friendly on screen; especially when used as primary navigation for a site.
All in all, a very inspiring list though.
Cédric GIRARD
February 5th, 2009 1:07 amExcellent selection, it’s a good base for inspiration ;-)
To my mind, CSS bases menus are a very good solution, improoving design, accessibility and SEO capacity (used with negative text indents…) ; I use it litteraly for all my websites.
Example here => http://www.effi10.com
On the other hand, I hate Flash… Not accessible, not SEO friendly, and limits user experience to an unique way…
emi
February 5th, 2009 1:39 amgreat ideas…. I am planning to use one of these in my new project.
sekhar
February 5th, 2009 2:03 amVery good collections. Thank you.
Luke Walding
February 5th, 2009 2:10 amHey guys,
Luke from Bonfire here – thanks for the link. However the image associated to our work is actually wrong, it is somebody else’s menu!
“Bonfiremedia. Sometimes typography is just enough…”
Cheers
Mo
February 5th, 2009 2:16 amVery nice, mostly :) but there are some that were updated meanwhile and some that I don’t see the point on showing them, but mostly very nice. :D
Tanx :D
M.
February 5th, 2009 2:27 amThat would be “Portuguese”. Nice post!
Martin
February 5th, 2009 2:39 amSimilar to the Porsche Canada menu, take a look at the brilliant one on http://www.kawasaki.com
Fred
February 5th, 2009 3:58 amMy thoughts exactly. To put it in the words of Don Norman: “Some of these navigations probably won a prize.”
Darren Taylor
February 5th, 2009 4:26 amTwo comments:
1. Highly Usable Navigation – Taptap is awful.
2. Why no deep navigation examples, sites which have multiple levels and 100s of pages?
Ben
February 5th, 2009 4:28 amSome really awesome navigations. Thanks for sharing.
ArtBox7.com
February 5th, 2009 4:35 amNice. I really like this article. Thank you!
Craig - Abrishca Digital Media
February 5th, 2009 4:50 amSo much diversity in designs and approaches! Some people are fantastic in thinking outside the square…
Jonas
February 5th, 2009 4:59 amThe title of this article is wrong… Most of the examples in the article aren’t user-friendly at all. They’re beautifull and very creative, but not user-friendly.
Anne
February 5th, 2009 4:59 amNice but not necessarily userfriendly. I just tried a random one (acko.net) and the navigation doesn’t work in IE. In FF it’s o.k.
Jorge
February 5th, 2009 5:00 amReally nice!!
This one is an old label menu, good too
Avance Import
Sean
February 5th, 2009 6:27 amWow, lots of inspiration here!
Birdyoshi
February 5th, 2009 6:50 amThis is a better example than most on Smashing Magazine. Too often on this website, the “top ten best…” websites are all the homepages of web designers. Of course, this post has a lot of that too. But this post also has real world examples like restaurants and such. I hope the editors of Smashing Magazine encourage the blog writers to use more useful, real world examples… (because often our most cherished CSS experts have stopped making websites and make all their money by giving lectures at Web Standards conferences… and as smart as they are, they cease being good examples to follow when they stop working as web designers)…
luxbrand
February 5th, 2009 6:57 amSome great examples there.
I made a Flash based header/menu recently. It’s not on par with some of those above but I’m happy enough with it :) : http://www.move2lux.com
Marianna
February 5th, 2009 8:14 amThanks for this post. Really creative and inspiring navigation menus, though I would also agree that they are not all user-friendly.
Tammy Hart
February 5th, 2009 8:15 amGreat inspiration, thanks so much again!
BoredReader
February 5th, 2009 8:31 amHow many times is SM going to use Alex Buga, Loodo, Acko.net, TNVacation, Jeff Sarmiento, etc. as examples… Every other day you title the post something different and dissect their sites. It’s flat out boring, and truly not that informative at all.
Ash
February 5th, 2009 9:01 amGorgeous selection ! Thanx a lot.
Jeffrey
February 5th, 2009 9:36 amNice inspiration, but… The vast majority of these fail on cross-browser compatibility and completely miss the mark on progressive enhancement. Javascript is an enhancement to CSS and HTML. Just as CSS is an enhancement to HTML. I would like to see a collection that showcases functionality in IE6 with javascript off and only gets cooler as you move up towards Firefox or Safari. Meaning sites that actually work in all environments.
dude
February 5th, 2009 9:43 amyou people have some of the worst fucking taste on the internet.
Chris Robinson
February 5th, 2009 9:57 amsome nice selections, some not so hot
beto machado
February 5th, 2009 9:57 amreally nice article dude, congratz.
i always read smashing magazine but this time you rock!
Bill Dagg
February 5th, 2009 10:03 amI’ll just echo the thoughts of what appear to be the minority here (but I’d suggest the better-informed) … These are all very beautiful but of the 3 I tried (the first three, in fact), none of them were usuable. It’s not obvious that they are navigation at all. First rule of navigation menus is being able to find them.
AudioDork
February 5th, 2009 10:41 amUh. It’s RE-201, not SE-201. Not that anyone cares… ho hum.
Euge
February 5th, 2009 11:25 amCan some of these be used with WordPress?
Charles
February 5th, 2009 12:13 pmThis is a great list. It’s very extensive, and I’m sure will provide a lot of design inspiration in the future. However, I do not think that it lives up to its “User-Friendly” title – the vast majority of these are clearly not designed with usability as the primary focus.
Greg Johnson
February 5th, 2009 12:18 pmThese mashups are much more useful when they link to examples of how you too can achieve these effects. Here are two (one of them is a shameless plug for my blog) off the top of my head: Dragon Interactive hover fade and CODA popup bubble.
Florian Stelter
February 5th, 2009 12:35 pmAnd another nice CSS-Navigation from a german website: http://www.liberty-homes.de
Brandon Carson
February 5th, 2009 12:58 pmThanks Matt for the shout out!
Burclar
February 5th, 2009 1:07 pmReally great job smash magazine i like that “Designsensory” Menu it has perfect web design too .
Rui Alão
February 5th, 2009 1:29 pmHi, Matt. just a note: Nando (of Nando Designer) is not portuguese, he’s brazilian, from Rio de Janeiro.
cheers!
Rui
Courtny Cotten
February 5th, 2009 2:38 pmI agree with boredreader #39 we have seen most of these sites in previous posts. I guess it’s OK to dissect these sites but hopefully we can look forward to some new content here on SM and not simply re-posts with different titles.
Jason Reed
February 5th, 2009 2:59 pmI might mention that my site (included in this list) does actually validate as XHTML 1.0 strict, and gracefully degrades as well. I just wanted to prove that some JS-dependent navigation can actually remain useful if JS is disabled, and to dismiss any navigation that uses JS is perhaps a bit short sighted.
Whether or not it is ‘user friendly’ is perhaps up to the individual user. I find it to be friendly and interesting, but that’s just me.
Margaret
February 5th, 2009 8:20 pmThanks for the compilation =) Seems hover menus and tabs are pretty common
Eren Emre Kanal
February 5th, 2009 8:29 pm50 Beautiful
And User-FriendlyNavigation Menus.But thanks :)
Rene
February 5th, 2009 11:41 pmamazing! Thx!
David Leggett
February 5th, 2009 11:58 pm@Euge I worked on the navigation featured from Tutorial9.net and UXBooth.com, and can confirm that both these sites are WordPress blogs. Takes a bit of understanding to get things to work nicely though =/
Knoxville Website Design
February 6th, 2009 6:24 amNice collection here to revisit from time to time.
archknight79
February 6th, 2009 8:35 amnice one really! :D
devlim.com
February 6th, 2009 8:47 amReally nice collection, Thank!
David Stewart
February 6th, 2009 10:03 amThe fact that there are “highly usable” and “user-friendly” categories shows how ridiculous the others are. The menu is unimportant. The content should drive navigation and be the focus of your site. It’s like Vista vs. Mac OS X. The UI shouldn’t be the focus.
teddY
February 6th, 2009 12:17 pmThat’s an awesome compiled list of navigation! Not only that the sites sport an intuitive and visitor-friendly navigation menu, they have great designs that inspire. These websites have more than just menus to offer – thanks for sharing! Woonky.ideas is one of the brightest one so far, not to mention the ones from Studioracket and Fubiz :)
me
February 6th, 2009 1:56 pmThe whitehouse.gov menu doesn’t use javascript actually accept for maybe the transparency. it’s all css for the hover and column like menu item list
Mushex Antaranian
February 6th, 2009 5:32 pmAdidas.com – beautiful but not user friendly ..
Keith Moore
February 7th, 2009 3:36 amA very nice CSS/Java menu I’ve found at http://www.nextframe.ro . You might want to include this too.
Ralph
February 7th, 2009 10:32 amMany great ideas. Thank you.
Christopher Peterson
February 7th, 2009 2:16 pmThis is a great list of sites, i will be sure to come backt o it for inspiration.
As for user friendly, not so much, especially the flash layouts.
yelloface
February 7th, 2009 4:52 pmMatt, thanks for adding my website nopokographics in your list.
Great job guy!
Keep going!
Web Designer
February 9th, 2009 4:32 amSome very nice examples.
AthenaEmily
February 9th, 2009 6:32 amThanks very much for the nice list, you guys always showcase things that are truly inspiring and fresh! Thanks!
Ronny Pries
February 10th, 2009 1:09 amThx a dozen for the apprecation – SM ftw!
Blogger Template
February 11th, 2009 6:34 amWow great collection and thanks for the list.
Wouter Van den Neste
February 11th, 2009 6:47 pmReal nice article! There are some great innovative ideas included in this post!
Derek Herman
February 12th, 2009 1:56 amI built AppStorm and I want to say thank you for including it in this awesome list, but just thought it might be important to note that the jQuery used for the menu is to add a class to the current top level category so it stays active when hovering over the subnav. It really isn’t a full blown jQuery menu, just a couple lines of code are used to achieve the effect. The CSS is really the one that is doing the heavy lifting here. And by the way, great roundup. There are a lot of really nice navigation out there.
Usman Arshad
February 12th, 2009 2:08 amThanks a lot for sharing, keep it up!
delirium
February 14th, 2009 3:50 pmcool! thanks
Daniel
March 4th, 2009 5:30 pmThese are all super inspiring. I think I come to this website almost once a day to check on new and great information. I just created a very cool blog that I am super proud of. It has a ticker that sends info to readers and it has links at the top as well as side links that move with you as you navigate the blog. It also has a music player that we installed that organizes all of the music on the page. I know you said no link dropping but I am just really proud of the navigation part of my blog and would love to show you and your readers. Cheers.
Slovica
March 5th, 2009 7:33 pmMany thanks!
Jones
March 16th, 2009 6:31 pmNick Tones sounds much cooler but it’s Nick Jones. Thanks so much for including me though!
Bold Endeavours
March 26th, 2009 2:39 amthis is amasing! i am really impressed by the variety of menues. thank you
Sweny
September 7th, 2010 1:00 amI am impressed too :)
mahesh
April 6th, 2009 4:21 amawesome list
Thnks guys.
asma
April 6th, 2009 8:54 pmvery nice post.. But i feel NickAd is not user friendly..
William A
April 23rd, 2009 8:44 amCan Nick Tones’ be made in CSS as well? Any idea or other examples?
Will
April 24th, 2009 12:51 amSome really pretty example in there, which are great to look at and showcase the talents of the designers that came up with them.
But…..as other people have said, many are distinctly user unfriendly. Visitors to your site shouldn’t have to think about how to navigate it – it should be intuitive. Sure, this might make for some slightly less pretty nav solutions (although there’s still a lot of scope IMO) but it’s much more important for users to be able to navigate your site than to sit there thinking, “wow, pretty. Now how do I get about”.
That said, there are certainly some examples in this list that look good, and enhance the user experience.
Me
May 13th, 2009 7:06 amSome of these examples are nice….. yet…. a lot of these examples are pretty horrible. Looking at the mac slide bar… I hate using that thing. When the browser loads the page the control does not respond immediately. There are other things in this list that are pretty bad too like the small stone example… hey, here is an idea…. make users hunt around for things they need… why not just hide the links all together and they just have to click and guess where they want to go and really waste their time… yeah, that’s the ticket. :/
Rob
August 8th, 2009 10:09 pmWhat about Ajax Web Awards menu?
linob
September 23rd, 2009 10:33 amVery good collection
Jim
October 15th, 2009 6:47 amGreat article. And of course there is the easy way to create flash menus using FMF: http://www.flashmenufactory.com/
Felix
January 4th, 2010 7:56 amI love macrabbit’s menu!
Amie
January 5th, 2010 11:00 amWhere in the world can you learn to make these masterpieces?? Books, articles, tutorials? Anyone?!!!
Mattwi
February 19th, 2010 9:15 amThese are truly excellent, well done
Web Design Camarillo
May 20th, 2010 12:12 pmAnytime text is written vertically it is difficult to read and generally not considered to be user friendly. However it does have high aesthetic value.
Boomdocks
May 30th, 2010 9:38 pmThese are excellent compilations of navigation menus and websites that have outstanding designs. Keep them coming.