<nav>: The Navigation Section element
Baseline Widely available
This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.
The <nav>
HTML element represents a section of a page whose purpose is to provide navigation links, either within the current document or to other documents. Common examples of navigation sections are menus, tables of contents, and indexes.
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Attributes
This element only includes the global attributes.
Usage notes
- It's not necessary for all links to be contained in a
<nav>
element.<nav>
is intended only for a major block of navigation links; typically the<footer>
element often has a list of links that don't need to be in a<nav>
element. - A document may have several
<nav>
elements, for example, one for site navigation and one for intra-page navigation.aria-labelledby
can be used in such case to promote accessibility, see example. - User agents, such as screen readers targeting disabled users, can use this element to determine whether to omit the initial rendering of navigation-only content.
Examples
In this example, a <nav>
block is used to contain an unordered list (<ul>
) of links. With appropriate CSS, this can be presented as a sidebar, navigation bar, or drop-down menu.
<nav class="menu">
<ul>
<li><a href="#">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="#">About</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Contact</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
The semantics of the nav
element is that of providing links. However a nav
element doesn't have to contain a list, it can contain other kinds of content as well. In this navigation block, links are provided in prose:
<nav>
<h2>Navigation</h2>
<p>
You are on my home page. To the north lies <a href="/blog">my blog</a>, from
whence the sounds of battle can be heard. To the east you can see a large
mountain, upon which many <a href="/school">school papers</a> are littered.
Far up this mountain you can spy a little figure who appears to be me,
desperately scribbling a <a href="/school/thesis">thesis</a>.
</p>
<p>
To the west are several exits. One fun-looking exit is labeled
<a href="https://games.example.com/">"games"</a>. Another more
boring-looking exit is labeled <a href="https://isp.example.net/">ISP™</a>.
</p>
<p>
To the south lies a dark and dank <a href="/about">contacts page</a>.
Cobwebs cover its disused entrance, and at one point you see a rat run
quickly out of the page.
</p>
</nav>
Result
Technical summary
Content categories | Flow content, sectioning content, palpable content. |
---|---|
Permitted content | Flow content. |
Tag omission | None, both the starting and ending tag are mandatory. |
Permitted parents | Any element that accepts flow content. |
Implicit ARIA role | navigation |
Permitted ARIA roles | No role permitted |
DOM interface | HTMLElement |
Specifications
Specification |
---|
HTML Standard # the-nav-element |
Browser compatibility
BCD tables only load in the browser