30+ Essential Javascript Framework Supported Navigation Techniques

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).