A simple navigation menu built with CSS3 and the jQuery UI.

The css with some custom fonts via Google font API

@import url(http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lobster);
body {margin:0; padding:0; background:#ddd;}
#nav{position:relative; margin:40px; background:#eee; padding:0; font-family:'Lobster', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:21px; -moz-border-radius:5px; -khtml-border-radius:5px; -webkit-border-radius:5px; border-radius:5px; -moz-box-shadow:2px 2px 3px #ccc; -webkit-box-shadow:2px 2px 3px #ccc; box-shadow:2px 2px 3px #ccc;}
#nav .clear{clear:both;}
#nav ul{padding:0 0 0 5px; margin:0; list-style:none;}
#nav li{float:left; margin:5px 10px 5px 0; background:#eee; -moz-border-radius:5px; -khtml-border-radius:5px; -webkit-border-radius:5px; border-radius:5px;}
#nav li a{text-decoration:none; color:#9e0039; display:block; padding:10px 15px;}

Load the jquery library and UI straight from Google

<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.8/jquery-ui.min.js"></script>

The jQuery code

<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
 $nav_li=$("#nav li");
 $nav_li_a=$("#nav li a");
 var animSpeed=450; //fade speed
 var hoverTextColor="#fff"; //text color on mouse over
 var hoverBackgroundColor="#9e0039"; //background color on mouse over
 var textColor=$nav_li_a.css("color");
 var backgroundColor=$nav_li.css("background-color");
 //text color animation
 $nav_li_a.hover(function() {
  var $this=$(this);
  $this.stop().animate({ color: hoverTextColor }, animSpeed);
 },function() {
  var $this=$(this);
  $this.stop().animate({ color: textColor }, animSpeed);
 });
 //background color animation
 $nav_li.hover(function() {
  var $this=$(this);
  $this.stop().animate({ backgroundColor: hoverBackgroundColor }, animSpeed);
 },function() {
     var $this=$(this);
  $this.stop().animate({ backgroundColor: backgroundColor }, animSpeed);
 });
});
</script>

The markup

<div id="nav">
 <ul>
     <li><a href="#about">About</a></li>
        <li><a href="#portfolio">Portfolio</a></li>
        <li><a href="#recent">Recent projects</a></li>
        <li><a href="#experiments">Experiments / miscellaneous</a></li>
        <li><a href="#contact">Contact me</a></li>
    </ul>
    <div class="clear"></div>
</div>

To add support for rounded corners in IE we can use DD_roundies script by Drew Diller. Add the following code inside the head tags.

<script src="DD_roundies_0.0.2a-min.js"></script>
<script>
DD_roundies.addRule("#nav", "5px");
DD_roundies.addRule("#nav li", "5px");
</script>

That’s about it. Feel free to modify it as you like