Bhanu Ahluwalia February 17th, 2011

jQuery Menus with Stunning Animations

jQuery is a great tool that helps our imagination turn ideas into reality. We can do almost everything we can think of with the help of this useful tool. Apart from being a lightweight cross-browser JavaScript library that simplifies HTML and Ajax interactions for rapid web development, it also gives sites that sleek look while also representing important data in a very attractive way. [fblike] You should always keep in mind that once a user lands on your site, the fist thing s/he does is to navigate and check out the content. If your site lacks in providing the user an attractive navigation, s/he will loose interest and will be clicking on that 'Back' button within seconds — even if the content on the site is excellent. Hence to stand apart you need to make your menu on your site different and appealing to users.

We've collected some tutorials to help you understand how to give your menus that stunning visual effect and animations. Please feel free to share any sites you've discovered that have been developed with jQuery. Enjoy!

Scrollable Thumbs Menu with jQuery In this tutorial you can learn how to create a fixed menu with scrollable thumbs which you can nicely control with your mouse: Scrollable Thumbs Menu with jQuery Sweet Menu Sweet Menu takes an ordinary list of links and makes it a sweet looking menu. It does this by utilizing jQuery and it’s plugin system: Sweet Menu Creating a Fancy Menu Using CSS3 and jQuery Here you can see how a fancy menu can be created with the help of the new CSS3 features along wth jQuey: Creating a Fancy menu using CSS3 and jQuery Rocking and Rolling Rounded Menu with jQuery In this tutorial you can make use of the rotating and scaling jQuery patch from Zachary Johnson to create a menu with little icons that will rotate when hovering: Rocking and Rolling Rounded Menu with jQuery Slick Drop-Down Menu with Easing Effect Using jQuery & CSS Drop-down menus are an excellent feature because they help clean up a busy layout. When structured correctly, drop-down menus can be a great navigation tool: Slick Drop down Menu with Easing Effect Using jQuery & CSS Thumbnails Navigation Gallery with jQuery Here is a great tutorial on how to create an extraordinary gallery with scrollable thumbnails that slide out from a navigation: Thumbnails Navigation Gallery with jQuery Collapsing Site Navigation with jQuery A collapsing menu that contains vertical navigation bars and a slide out content area can be created like this: Collapsing Site Navigation with jQuery jStackmenu Here is a jQuery UI widget for Stack Menus. Click here to find out more: jStackmenu Create Your Own “kwicks” jQuery Effect Check out this tutorial to find out how you can create your own kwicks jQuery effect: Create Your Own “kwicks” jQuery Effect Overlap that Menu! In this tutorial, you can learn how to achieve overlapping effects to your menu: Overlap that Menu! Overlay Effect Menu with jQuery In this tutorial you can learn how to create a simple menu that will stand out once you hover over it by covering everything except the menu with a dark overlay: Overlay Effect Menu with jQuery jQuery Multicolor Animation Drop-Down Navigation Menu Check out this tutorial on how to create a multicolor drop-down navigation menu with jQuery: jQuery Multicolor animation drop down navigation menu jQuery Floating Menu A simple navigation menu that “follows” page scrolling and expands on mouse over — made with CSS and jQuery: jquery floating menu Kwicks for jQuery & a Horizontal Animated Menu Here is a walkthrough where you can see the final result of using Kwicks. A jQuery plugin that builds a horizontal menu with a nice effect like Mootools but much more customizable and versatile: Kwicks for jQuery and an awesome horizontal animated menu Fading Navigation Menu Here is a simple, neat navigation menu using CSS sprites and a bit of jQuery code to give it a visually appealing fade effect: Fading Navigation Menu UI Elements: Search Box with Filter and Large Drop Down Menu A tutorial that will show you how to create a search box with a filter and a large drop-down menu: UI Elements: Search Box with Filter and Large Drop Down Menu jQuery Convertion: Garagedoor Slider Navigation Effect Learn how to turn your menu to jQuery and give it a Garagedoor slider navigation effect as well: jQuery convertion: Garagedoor slider navigation effect Create Bounce Out Vertical Menu with jQuery A simple bounce out vertical menu is created here with the help of a little bit of CSS3 and jQuery Framework to create a vertical menu which on mouse hover gives a nice bounce out sliding effect: Create Bounce out Vertical menu with jQuery Slide Down Box Menu with jQuery and CSS3 Learn how to create a unique sliding box navigation. The idea here is to make a box with the menu item slide out, while a thumbnail pops up: Slide Down Box Menu with jQuery and CSS3 LavaLamp Plugin This plugin has some attractive features like targeting and container options, automatic default location, vertical and horizontal morphing: LavaLamp Plugin Little Boxes Menu with jQuery A nice display of little boxes that animate randomly when the menu item is clicked. It then expands and reveals a content area for some description or links: Little Boxes Menu with jQuery Horizontal Scrolling Menu Made with CSS and jQuery Here is a tutorial that explains how to make a horizontal scrolling menu made with CSS and jQuery: Horizontal Scrolling Menu made with CSS and jQuery Beautiful Background Image Navigation with jQuery Learn how to create a beautiful navigation that has a background image slide effect. The main idea here is to have three list items that contain the same background image but with a different position: Beautiful Background Image Navigation with jQuery Awesome Cufonized Fly-out Menu with jQuery and CSS3 One of our favourites! Here is a full page cufonized menu that has two nice features: Awesome Cufonized Fly-out Menu with jQuery and CSS3 (ik) [fblike]

Bhanu Ahluwalia

Bhanu Ahluwalia is a graduate in Computer Science and a social media enthusiast from India. He specializes in web design by qualification and photography by passion. He is an avid blogger, running TutZone and co-authoring DesignUnder and SloDive. You can reach him via Twitter.

35 comments

  1. Fantastic collection. Thanks for doing all this research. And thanks to all the developers of the demos and tutorials for creating and sharing with the community!

  2. Fantastic list, it’s amazing what you can do with jQuery… which is good because I’d rather get to grips with that than master actionscript 3.

  3. Awesome list. I am really digging the thumbnails navigation gallery by “tympanus”. I will definitely be using it in the future. Thanks!

  4. Nice collection. Thank god for jquery in all of its glory. :) I am considering using a few of these on a clients site. Thanks again!

  5. How awesome is the Little Boxes Menu with jQuery menu ? You can make a personal portfolio using only this menu for the whole website . Amazing menu and a great list

  6. Great Collection. I’m putting a new menu system in our website and your fine list of menus made it easy and quick to pick. Thanks!

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