Use of table for building the menu

HTML element <table> has the advantage of being well implemented in all major browsers, so no displaying issues when it's content is deployed. The idea is simple, to create only one table row, with one data cell for each item menu. Using the CSS style attributes the menu will get the appearance it needs.

The HTML code is a follows:

<table>
<tr>
<td><a href="">Item 1</a></td>
<td><a href="">Second Item</a></td>
<td><a href="">Third One</a></td>
<td><a href="">Item 4</a></td>
<td><a href="">Fifth in the row</a></td>
<td><a href="">LastItem</a></td>
</tr>
</table>

We can add some style to the table appearance and be sure you set the border-collapse property to collapse so no spaces are between data cells and borders are collapsed into a single border when possible. A detailed presentation of this style property can be found at W3 Schools CSS border-collapse property page.

Using unordered list items to create navigational menu

Using the items of an unordered list to create the navigational menu is, maybe, the most used technique.
Comparing with the previous method it requires almost the same number of lines for CSS styles, and the effect is similar. To display items horizontally you can use the display:inline style property, so the elements of the unordered list are displayed in the same line, like a row of elements. Setting the item elements to be displayed as inline elements, make them "unmovable" on y axis, which means that using padding or margin property to arrange the way they are displayed has no effect. But giving some values to height or/and line-height properties this issue can be easily handled.

Another way to display the elements on the same row is to float the list-items of the unordered list to left. This method tends to be more desired then the previous and the result is much similar with the menu created using table elements.

Following the next link you can see a few examples of horizontal navigational menus using the methods described above. I left the style properties unaltered so you can see on different web browser how the menus are displayed.

Adding some graphic style to the menu

Using background images for the elements of the menu creates a nice and more desired visual effect. Even if you use a repeated background image or you create a little more sophisticated rounded corner button for your menu you definitely add a bit of color to the (maybe) flat HTML page. In the next line I'll give some hints on how to create these rounded corner buttons.

Creating rounded corner buttons for the navigational menu

The simplest approach may be to create a button with a given width and height and use it as a background image for each item of the menu. This will work fine in situations when the text of the menu items has the same length or the differences are insignificant.

Split image for the background

Another method is to split the images in two parts and build the menu items using besides the anchor element an additional span element. The code for the menu will look like:

<ul id="split">
<li><a href=""><span>Item 1</span></a></li>
<li><a href=""><span>Second Item</span></a></li>
<li><a href=""><span>Third One</span></a></li>
<li><a href=""><span>Item 4</span></a></li>
<li><a href=""><span>Fifth in the row</span></a></li>
<li><a href=""><span>Last Item</span></a></li>
</ul>

The idea is to set the display:block property for anchor and span elements, and using the padding values the items are displayed correctly with the desired effect, which means that the width of each item will follow the length of the text. Note that the image on the right side in this case should have a width which is greater than the length of the text with the values for the left and right padding added; otherwise the background image will be broken.

Using two span elements for the right and left margins

In this case the image is split in three parts, one for the right margin, second for the left margin and the third one for the middle. This last one image may have a width as small as possible, because it can be repeated on x axis. The HTML code of the menu will be as follows:

<ul id="split3">
<li><a href=""><span><span>Item 1</span></span></a></li>
<li><a href=""><span><span>Second Item</span></span></a></li>
<li><a href=""><span><span>Third One</span></span></a></li>
<li><a href=""><span><span>Item 4</span></span></a></li>
<li><a href=""><span><span>Fifth in the row</span></span></a></li>
<li><a href=""><span><span>Last Item</span></span></a></li>
</ul>

The good part for this method is that the padding values can be set just for the last span element, and this is enough to reach the desired effect. Even we have more CSS and HTML code for this last method I think is more simple than the previous one, because you don't have to tweak padding values to have all elements aligned.

Please follow this link to see (and download files) examples of building navigational menus using the method I've described.

The resulted page was tested on Firefox v3.0.9., Internet Explorer v6.0, v7.0 and v8.1, Opera v9.63, Safari v3.2.1 and Google Chrome.