Design Trends for Fixed Navigation Menus in Web Design

When you design a navigation menu for your corporate WordPress themes, it requires a lot of attention and planning. Your navigation scheme should comply with your users and your audience. You should know which navigation should fit best in your layout.

There is no hard and fast rule. Some of the designers prefer smaller navigation bars while some prefer huge ones. But the one thing which is common for all is the fixed scrolling navigation bar. This works perfectly with all sizes, styles and is mostly loved by all. Looking for some cool trends to add a fixed navigation to your website, we have something for you.

1. Auto-Resizing Navbars
If you are working with a website having big navigation menu, then auto-resizing navigation bars is the perfect choice for your website. This navbar has set a benchmark for modern designers. By applying this navbar in your website, you can assure of one thing that your menu won’t be taking much space.
Most of the fixed navigation bars just stick to the screen, which was a serious concern for the designers. The situation turned more worse when it was used in mobile sites. These auto-resizing navbars resize automatically with the smaller screens. This seriously enhances the User Experience thereby impressing your audience with good web presentations and animated websites.

2. Fixed Vertical Navs
Horizontal navigation menus have ruled over websites for quite a long time. But the trend is changing. Now people prefer a vertical navigation bar. Apply it only if you know how to design this o else you can take a help from a software developer. Most of these navigation bars just require a sticky nav style. The reason is to make all the links accessible from anywhere over the website.

For example:
1. Michael Ngo is a very simple navigation bar which uses custom icons in order to improve the navigation style. The approach followed is minimalistic which fits well with most of the portfolio websites.

2. Roman kirichik: This nav bar quickly takes a half-screen design in the header. But once you scroll down it quickly relocates itself into a smaller sidebar. Obviously, all the links stay intact and in place which makes them easy to access.

3. Add Depth with Drop Shadows
If you are a regular internet surfer, you must have seen the drop shadow effect for sure. Just check the effect for Grain & Mortar, you will get to know what I am talking about. Most designer prefer a subtle CSS# shadows affect to add a depth into the page. The effect used in the website is awesome as it uses a simple drop shadow falling off their fixed navigation bar. It just adds a subtle affect of layering. With a consequence to that, the nav tends to appear on-top of the content every time you scroll.

4. Scrolling Animation in Navbars
Custom web animation was a treacherous concept for the web developers a decade ago. But now, the scenarios have changed. The process is now as easy as installing a plugin to the website or deploying a jQuery. So, the process of customizing the layouts with micro interactions and smaller animations has become much easier.

For example:
Search Engine Journal: here the logo remains fixed at the top of every page. But when you scroll down the logo animates into a view in the header. This helps in keeping the nav bar clean and provides more logo space which certainly is an attention grabber.

Winding Up
Navigation trends have been changing and continue to stay for a longer period of time. Design your corporate WordPress Themes with any of the above mentioned cool navs which allow fixing the links and making them accessible on every page.