30 CSS Menu Tutorials to Build Attractive Menus

Navigation is an extremely important part of your website.  Your visitors need to be able to browse through your website easily and find what they’re looking for without getting lost or wasting too much time.  They don’t need to be thinking “where to now?”. You’re the one responsible for showing them where to go next.

That means that navigation shouldn’t be complicated, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be attractive.  CSS is the ideal language for designing navigation menus that are attractive, yet user-friendly. Given its flexibility, you can use CSS in any website whatsoever.

If you’re planning on designing a navigation menu for your website and have little to none experience with CSS, there’s absolutely no reason to be worried. With so many great CSS menu tutorials out there, you’ll find no problem in crafting one for your website easily, even if you’re just a beginner.

Here is a collection of 30 CSS menu tutorials that anybody can use to create a menu. Most every tutorial included will walk you through all the steps you need to follow to design a beautiful and professional menu. You can copy and paste the code exactly as it is or you can modify it and customize it to your liking.

1. CSS Menu Trick

With browsers supporting many more features, this tutorial is the solution to help create a powerful menu. You’ll find out how you can create CSS roll overs and other cool effects.

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2. Advanced CSS3 Menu

Here’s a tutorial that’s going to show you how to create a menu that features four states: normal, hover, focus and click.

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3. Slick CSS3 Menu

Create a menu using only CSS – no images and no Javascript. Copy and paste the code and start using it in a matter of minutes.

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4. CSS Sprite Powered Menu

Build a menu using a single CSS sprite image. This is one of the easiest ways to create a good looking menu for your website. The purpose of this tutorial is to help you create a menu that loads fast!

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5. CSS3 Mega Drop-Down Menu

If you own an online shop or other type of website that includes lots of content, here’s a tutorial that will help you build a menu to organize all the information. This will make it easier for your visitors to find their way around your site.

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If you’re a fan of dropdown menus, go ahead and check out our previous post on CSS jQuery Dropdown Menus.

6. Animated Navigation Menu With Pure CSS

Here’s a tutorial to help you create a fun, animated CSS menu for your site. Give your website some personality with this cool and easy to build menu.

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7. Random Rotation Menu

Build a cool menu with a messy look and a content area that slides out. It’s a great choice for a personal website or maybe a portfolio.

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8. Slide Down Box Menu

This is a great looking menu that you’ll want to include in your portfolio website. The tutorial will show you how to create a unique sliding box navigation.

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9. Advanced CSS Menu

Here’s another menu that you can use in your blog. The tutorial explains how to build an advanced menu using the CSS position property.

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10. CSS3 Dropdown Menu

Create a Mac-like multilevel dropdown menu for your website in a few minutes. The menu renders on Firefox, Chrome and Safary perfectly.

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11. Simple, horizontal CSS menu

With this tutorial, you will manage to create a simple and attractive horizontal CSS menu, with a nice hover effect.

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12. Drop down menu with nested submenus

Find out how to build a dropdown menu that displays properly on Internet Explorer. This is a common issue, so this tutorial will explain how you can create a dropdown menu that shows no error in IE.

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13. Pure CSS Fish Eye Menu

Create a cool menu with a fish eye effect, which means that when mouse pointer is over an icon, the icon expands.

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14. Advanced CSS Menu Using the Hover and Position Properties

Learn how to build a menu using the hover and position properties. The advanced menu that you’ll create will work perfectly on all major browsers and, with a bit of JavaScript, as well on IE.

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15. Sexy Drop Down Menu

This is a simple tutorial that shows how to build an attractive yet useful and uncomplicated menu. It’s easy to build as well as easy to use by your visitors.

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16. CSS Vertical Navigation with Teaser

Build a good looking vertical menu that displays a teaser information. This will give the users some details on what they can find on that section of your site.

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17. Animated Drop Down Menu

Save space on your site with a dropdown menu. Use this tutorial to learn how to build your own dropdown menu using jQuery and CSS.

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18. CSS vertical menu with show/hide effects

Build a simple vertical menu with show/hide effect and get it up and running on your site easily. Follow this tutorial to see how you can create your own menu in a few simple steps.

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19. Cufonized Fly-out Menu

This is a very cool menu that you can use in your portfolio website. This tutorial will show you how to create a menu with some nice features, meaning when the visitor hovers over a menu item a description bar slides out.

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20. Slide Out Navigation

Learn how to create a slide out CSS menu for your website in a few simple steps. The menu is simple yet extremely attractive because the items will only slide out when the user hover over an item from the menu.

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21. CSS3 Minimalistic Navigation Menu

This tutorial will show you how to create a simple CSS3 animated menu that works perfectly with all major browsers.

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22. Block navigation menu using pure css

Learn how to create a simple menu using just CSS. With this tutorial, you’ll be able to do it easily as it’s one of the simplest static menus you can build.

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23. Modern Ribbon Banner Navigation Bar

Use this tutorial to build a modern ribbon menu for a more playful site. In about 20 minutes, you’ll create your own good looking menu.

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24. Clean CSS3 Navigation Bar

Find out how to create a slick CSS menu easily. This tutorial was written especially for beginners, so everything is explained thoroughly.

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25. Social Media Sharing Menu

With social media being so popular, you should definitely consider including a social media share menu on your site. Here’s a tutorial that will explain exactly how to build it from scratch using CSS and jQuery.

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26. Vimeo-like top navigation

If you’re a fan of Vimeo’s top menu, here’s a menu that can help you build it and add it to your website. The menu is a dropdown menu that appears when you hover the search box.

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27. Wire Frame Aura Menu

Use this tutorial to build a clean looking CSS menu with a simple border outlining its edges. The menu also includes an “aura” effect on mouse over.

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28.  Thick Underline Menu

Build a horizontal CSS menu with a thick border underneath each link. It’s simple yet effective.

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29. Centered Tabs with CSS

Here’s a tutorial that can help you build a simple menu that is centered on your homepage. Follow the steps to create it and get it up and running on your website.

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30. Digg-like navigation bar

If you like the navigation bar used on Digg, use this tutorial to create one just like it for your website.

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Have you used a tutorial you found on the web to build your menu? Which one would you recommend? Let us know in a comment below.