The Dreaded NavBar!

We have a extra navbar built into the header. The links shown vary according to your status. For instance a guest will see a link to the registration page that nobody else will see. Links to private forums appear according to your access privileges. Mods see links to the ModCP, Admins see links to ModCP and Admin CP etc. It may not be perfect but it's quite flexible and works well for us. EvilGrin.org

Oops. I didn't notice that.
I came via the "What's New" link which grays out the forum name and makes it less obvious.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I've messed around with the navbar quite a bit and came to the conclusion quite quickly that if you really want it to look unique and still work correctly you'll probably want to rip it up and start again. I'm in the process of doing just that but I have nothing I'd want to show just yet.

In short the navbar is a "BITCH" to style which xenforo could easily extend in the way of adding more options to the navigation style properties (though there's nothing stopping people creating their own options). The parts which are a little tricky I find personally are the hovers, hovers when menus are open but I finally got to the point where I will soon create my own styling options.

I see a certain navbar floating above me. yup definetely hovering.

I've done about 90 different styles with the XenForo navbar.

It really isn't all that difficult, its just a matter of learning how it works, and taking into account what you can and cannot do with it (There isn't much you can't do, it just tends to be very difficult).

It is simply impossible to do a quality navbar with the default style properties however; you can only style things basically, and it really isn't impressive. To make a very attractive navigation you will have to utilize the different layers that make it up. On some navigations I use .navTab for styling the look, on others I remove all styling and make use of just the .navLink class. Sometimes I use both (xenBook uses both for example), and on some I barely use them at all.

The navigation of XenForo is the most difficult part of styling it, but it is also the most well built navigation for a pre-built system I've used. You have more choices in how you can build your navigation than vBulletin, and the only limit is your imagination, and understanding of CSS (If required).

While I think they do need to extend the style properties for the navigation, I know just how much it would take to give a style property for every portion of the navbar (Some of them are for custom features).

I had a issue with one of the hovers that little bit of indirect info kind of got me thinking when you mentioned using the navlink class along with the selector to fix that.

Might actually reverse the gradient and slice a separate hover image.

With regards to the style properties and xenforo adding more I very much doubt we will see the options us stylers want which is a shame because last time I check many people whom don't don't how to style the navigation are going to find it difficult without any kind of documentation. I'm now quite comfortable with the navbar myself, how it works and how I'll add my own set of style properties in but I'm hopeful the options are put in as default for other people.

Started afresh today and replicated the design I previously had with the custom navbar and I've managed to easily reduce the css used. I guess I eliminated 70% of the css code you see at bbsmiley and adminextra custom navbars (same designs) minus the bloated css.

I'm still sure I can reduce this as I'm 100% sure there's a more efficient way of doing the navbar but still learning and tinkering. Suffice to say I'm getting bored with doing navigation.

I take my hat off to those stylers doing this day in, day out, I just couldn't do this.

Code snippets (y).

Because I've written so many styles of navigation and other things, I can easily reuse portions of code to cut down on time spent. A lot of the framework is code snippets from Imperial, xenBook, and an older style I did.

All in all I've had some success in fixing most of the issues with the dreaded navbar which isn't so dreadful afterall. There's still a couple of minor issues (I think it may just be one) but it's so minor I'm happy that I can port the style over to my site anytime and further style/cater to the add-ons I have installed.

With that said and done, I think the spacer images where a main issue with the hovers but since that one minor issue is related to this, I think the next re-visit I'll turn to css3 box-shadow to rectify this but the spacers in the .visitorTabs took some tinkering to get right and working with the hovers.

The previous screenshot I posted in this thread, shows the maroon color on the main tab but I think it's better placed in the tablinks which left me to try and create a carbon fibre type pattern which I defined in photoshop and overlayed it into the main gradient/tab which I thought it worked out quite well but there's still room for improvement which I'll do over time. The custom search-bg.png was also a little tricky to get the join correct sitting on top of the mainnav but I think it looks seamless enough. Overall, I'm quite happy with the hovers all working, dropdowns working and other minor issues you can see at bbsmiley so making custom navbar colour alterations in this design will take me no more than 2 minutes to change colour and implement to the style and the whole code structure is so so easier to manage since I'm using less css and condensed it quite alot.

I think my next task will be moving forward and creating style properties but overall I'm

That tree really gives a sense of hierarchy... but I could also see where "the gurus" would have proclaimed that it's too much lost real estate (I think the real issue there that "the gurus" should think about is how deeply we should expect people to drill looking for a specific forum/thread instead).

I may also have nostalgia for it since UBB is where we started after our community came over from the Prodigy bulletin boards.