A nice navigation menu, along with user friendly layout will help users get around and access the necessary content faster. The most difficulty is web developers must spend a lot of time to get the navigation works properly on all browsers. Simple solution is the JavaScript framework library, and that is the purpose of this free JavaScript article.

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Navigation is key to any web site or blog. Good and user friendly navigation making it easy for your visitors to get around fast is simply one of the most elemental elements of web design and development. It is possible to create user-friendly horizontal or vertical navigation menus using CSS and there are hundreds of scripts and tutorials available online to learn this technique. By adding Javascript it possible to create more interactive, more dynamic and more flexible navigation but even if you find working with both CSS and Javascript pretty simple you're facing the never ending browser compatibility issue. It is simply too hard for most web developers to create a dynamic navigation solution that is fit for purpose in all relevant browsers. The obvious approach to solving this issue is to use one of the very popular Javascript Frameworks as anyone else. jQuery, prototype (and script.aculo.us), Dojo and mootools are all free to use, very mature and commonly used and there are tons of brilliant scripts available for addressing your navigations needs. This article covers a wide range of Essential navigations scripts where most of them are supported by Javascript Frameworks.

Multi Level and (Multi Direction)

CSS Drop-Down Menu Framework

This is a very flexible and good looking menu. Can be transformed by changing CSS class name only. Available transformations: horizontal, vertical left-to-right, vertical right-to-left, horizontal linear, horizontal upwards.

Main features:

• Modular, with themes. Not only HTML is separated from CSS, but even CSS definitions are categorized into structural and thematic types. Thus creating a new css drop-down menu means creating only a new theme since structure is permanent. What is more, creating a new theme is easy with available templates and takes 10-15 mins.
• Easily deployable. The code and files are well organized. Available channels to hook up to your CMS or other tools as well as existing websites in XHTML format.
• Easily transformable. Can be transformed by changing class name only. Available transformations: horizontal, vertical left-to-right, vertical right-to-left, horizontal linear, horizontal upwards.
• Cross browser. Configurations available for Windows Internet Explorer 5 or later, Mozilla Firefox 1.5 or later, Opera 7 or later, Apple Safari 2 or later, Google Chrome 1, etc.
• JavaScript only for IE. Minimal JavaScript code only for IE 6 or earlier. Can be used with popular JavaScript libraries Jquery or Scriptaculous. Everything else is pure CSS.

Demos: Flickr ultimate horizontal | Flickr horizontal linear | Flickr horizontal upward | Flickr vertical left-to-right | Flickr vertical right-to-left

Download: source code

JavaScript Dropdown Menu with Multi Levels

This multi-level drop down menu script weighs in at only 1.2 KB. It features animation, active header persistence, easy implementation and multiple instance support. This script has been tested in Firefox 2/3, IE 6/7/8, Opera, Safari and Chrome.

Click here for the demo | Download source code

Drop Down Tabs (5 styles)

Drop Down Tabs is a horizontal CSS tabs menu that supports a second level drop down menu for each of its tabs.

MenuMatic

MenuMatic is a MooTools 1.2 class that takes a sematic ordered or unordered list of links and turns it into a dynamic drop down menu system. For users without javascript, it falls back on a CSS menu system based on Matthew Carroll's keyboard accessible flavor of Suckerfish Dropdowns by Patrick Griffiths and Dan Webb.

Features Include:

• - Search Engine Friendly
• - Accessible: Tab through main menu links with tab key. Navigate through drop down menus with arrow keys
• - Fails Gracefully: Falls back to suckerfish CSS based drop down menu system in the absence of javascript.

Smooth Navigational Menu

Smooth Navigation Menu is a multi level, CSS list based menu powered using jQuery that makes website navigation a smooth affair. And that's a good thing given the important role of this element in any site.

The menu's contents can either be from direct markup on the page, or an external file and fetched via Ajax instead. And thanks to jQuery, a configurable, sleek "slide plus fade in" transition is applied during the unveiling of the sub menus.

Dropdownmenu made with scriptaculous/prototype

A multi level drop down menu.

Superfish

Superfish is an enhanced Suckerfish-style menu jQuery plugin that takes an existing pure CSS drop-down menu (so it degrades gracefully without JavaScript).

Professional dropdown #2

Good looking menu but it is unclear if it is still maintained. Tested in IE5.5, IE6, IE7, Firefox, Opera, Netscape, Mozilla, Safari (PC) and Safari (iPod Touch). Testing in recent browser versions is recommended before using it. A donation for use of this menu is required. Visit stunicholls.com where you find more than 30 great menu scripts.

Professional slide drop #1

Simple drop down menu that has a vertical sliding action. Hover over a top level link to slide down the submenu, and it does slide down, not just appear using a vertical shutter action, and then hover over the same top level to close or another top level to open that one and close the previous one. You can run your mouse over the top level items to open and close them and they will all work simultaneously.

This uses a simple javascript routine to read the mouse hovers and slide the sub menu list either up or down depending on the current state of the sub menu.

Tested in IE6, IE7, Firefox, Opera and Safari (PC).

List Based Menu with Images

This is a menu based on an unordered list (<UL><LI>). It makes the menu easy to use and friendly to search engines.

Unlimited Drop Menu

CSS Express Drop-Down Menus

CSS Express menus should only be used in a horizontal orientation with a single drop-down level.

Chrome CSS Drop Down Menu

Chrome Menu is a CSS and JavaScript hybrid drop down menu. It's easy to configure and search engine friendly.

Create a multilevel Dropdown menu with CSS and improve it via jQuery

The first part of this tutorial is dedicated to the task of building a working CSS-only dropdown menu (also known as suckerfish menu), the second part will show you how you can pimp the whole thing with a few lines of jQuery.

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