W3.CSS Navigation Bars

W3.CSS Navigation Bar Classes

W3.CSS provides the following classes for navigation bars:

Basic Navigation

The w3-bar class is a container for displaying HTML elements horizontally.

The w3-bar-item class defines the container elements.

It is a perfect tool for creating navigation bars:

Responsive Navigation

The w3-mobile class makes any bar elements responsive (horizontal on large screens and vertical on small).

Colored Navigation Bars

Use a w3-color class to add a color to the navigation bar:

Bordered Navigation Bars

Use a w3-border or w3-card class to add borders around the navigation bar, or to display it as a card:

Active/Current Link

Add a w3-color class to a link to highlight it:

Hoverable Links

When you mouse over a button, the background color will change to grey.

If you want a different background color on hover, use any of the w3-hover-color classes:

If you want to change the text color instead, turn off the default hover effect with the w3-hover-none class, and add a w3-hover-text class.

Spend some time to play around with different hover effects:

Right-Aligned Links

Use the w3-right class on a list item to right-align a specific link:

Navigation Bar Size

Use a w3-size class to change the font-size of the links inside the navbar:

Use a w3-padding class to change the padding of each link inside the navbar:

Note: You can also add padding to the navigation bar, instead of each button. However, if you do this, note that the links do not get full padding on hover:

Customize the width of the links with the CSS width property

(Note: Use w3-mobile to transform the links to 100% width on small screens):

Navigation Bar with Icons

Navigation Bar Text

If you want text instead of buttons inside the navigation bar, use the w3-bar-item class to get the same padding as the buttons.

Navbar with Inputs and Buttons

Navigation Bar with Dropdown

Move the mouse over the "Dropdown" link:

Clickable Dropdown

Use w3-dropdown-click if you prefer to click on the dropdown link instead of hover:

Horizontal Dropdown Menu

Remove the w3-bar-block class from the dropdown container if you want the dropdown links to display horizontally instead of vertically:

Responsive Navbar with Responsive Dropdown

Use the w3-mobile class on all links including the dropdown container to create a responsive navbar with responsive dropdown links.

Resize the browser window to see the effect:

Fixed Navigation Bar

To force the navigation bar to stay at the top or at the bottom of the page, even when the user scrolls the page, wrap a <div> element around the bar and add the w3-top or w3-bottom class:

Vertical Navigation Bar

The w3-bar-block class is a container for displaying HTML elements vertically.

Collapsing the Navigation Bar

When the navigation bar takes up too much space on a small screen, and you do not want to display it vertically by default, you can use hide and show classes on specific links in the navigation bar.

In the example below, the navigation bar is replaced with a button (☰) in the top right corner when shown on tablets and mobile devices. When the button is clicked, the links in the navigation bar will vertically stack:

Side Navigation

The w3-sidebar class creates a side navigation:

Go to the next chapter to learn more about the side navigation.