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.
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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
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-labelledbycan 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.
html
<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:
html
<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
