The Most Minimal Navbar

2023-12-28

I try to keep anything I work on to its barest essentials. Make it work with the fewest moving parts. It’s the reason I was attracted to Hemingway and the iceberg theory when I studied writing in college. As much as possible, I apply this to the projects I’m developing as well. So, here is my method for making the most minimal, horizontal navbar. I found the simplest one I could when I was making this website, and as I learned more about CSS, I refactored and stripped it down even further.

Minimal Horizontal Navbar Codepen

Here is the Codepen for my navbar:

See the Pen most minimal navbar by josephmads (@josephmads) on CodePen.

How The Minimal Navbar Works

Of course, there is not too much going on here. I have three classes in the CSS: navbar, nav-menu, and nav-menu a.

navbar

navbar defines the dimensions, location, and background color of the navbar box, or container. I chose Django green for this example.

nav-menu

nav-menu defines how the elements behave inside of the navbar. display: inline-block; is doing most of the heavy lifting for making this navbar work and keeping it minimal. It’s what allows for the horizontal layout without having to use list items and float.

nav-menu a

nav-menu a styles the elements. This is not strictly necessary, but even a little styling can go a long way in improving function. nav-menu a:hover serves a similar purpose, helping the user see the link elements.

Conclusion

From here, you can style, improve, and complexify this simple navbar. I use this same skeleton for the navbar you see on this site.

Thank you for reading. I hope you find this tutorial helpful! If you have any comments or corrections, please let me know. I can be found on LinkedIn and Mastodon.