50+ Nice Clean CSS Tab-Based Navigation Scripts

Comprehensive list of clean and well-designed tab-based navigation scripts built on top of CSS and JavaScript.

One of the most vital tasks of a user experience designer is to make sure that the website’s navigation is simple and user-friendly. And what other way to make this possible than through navigation tabs.

Well-designed navigation tabs not only help users know where to go, they are important to drive traffic to the internal pages of your website or blog as well.

So, for my web designer friends, here is a long list of nice and clean CSS tab-based navigation scripts. Each option has a live demo along with its download source. So go on and take a look for yourself.

bootstrap-tabs-x – An extended tabs plugin built on the top of Bootstrap Tabs. It can align tabs, rotate titles, load content via AJAX, and numerous more features. [Demo]

bootstrap-tabs-x

Pure CSS Tabs with Indicator – A modern yet straightforward tabs library built without JavaScript. That means, it is fast and beautiful as well – as beautiful as you see on most popular websites. [Demo]

Pure-CSS-Tabs-with-Indicator

Tabby – Tabby lets you create simple toggle tabs, which can show any content including videos. It offers various advanced options and supports NPM and Bower too. [Demo]

tabby

Responsive Tabbed Navigation – A modern, handy tabbed navigation backed by JS and CSS, which is built with mobile-first in mind and supports horizontal as well as vertical positioning styles. [Demo]

Responsive Tabbed Navigation

Toggler – Toggler is a pure JavaScript plugin for creating toggle-able elements including accordions and tabs. Also, you can show/hide just any item on the page.

Toggler

Pure CSS Tabs – A simple tabs snippet created using CSS and JS. Though the example code show plain tabs yet you can beautify the tabs by changing their styling using CSS. [Demo]

Pure-CSS-Tabs

Tabsy CSS – A CSS-only library for creating simple toggle components like tabs. This library, unlike few of above ones, needs no dependencies – not even any JS code. [Demo]

Tabsy CSS

Tabbis.js – Tabbis is a simple yet advanced plugin. Using its advanced configuration options, you can create nested tabs and define callbacks too. [Demo]

Tabbis

Responsive Pure CSS Tabs [Demo]

Responsive-Pure-CSS-Tabs

CSS Tabs [Demo]

CSS-Tabs

Tabs using Pitaya – Tabs using Pitaya helps you create animated transition tabs easily. However, you must include Pitaya, which is a library in itself and increases the load time. [Demo]

Tabs using Pitaya

jTabs – jTabs is a tabs library built using pure JavaScript. That means it is built with no external dependencies like jQuery and supports few configuration options too. [Demo]

jTabs

Responsive Flexbox Tabs [Demo]

Responsive Flexbox Tabs

Tabs Accordion [Demo]

Tabs-Accordion

tabs.js – tabs.js is a pure JavaScript tabs library inspired by Accordion/Tabs of Bourbon Refills. It is responsive such that tabs change to accordions on small screens. [Demo]

tabs.js

WellTabber – WellTabber is another simple JavaScript plugin like Tabby. Like the latter, it supports various options to configure the tabs. Also, you can show navigation arrows. [Demo]

WellTabber

3D Cube Tabbed Interface [Demo]

3D Cube Tabbed Interface

Tabs Module for ES6 [Demo]

Tabs Module for ES6

Variable Heights with CSS Tabs [Demo]

Variable Heights with CSS Tabs

Material Design Tabs – A material design inspired tabs snippet built using Vanilla JavaScript. It is simple to use and customizable as well. However, it does not feature advanced options. [Demo]

Material Design Tabs

Animated CSS Tabs – Animated CSS Tabs is a CSS-only tabs system that lets you create simple, light tabs. Unlike Tabby or WellTabber, it does not offer any advanced configuration. [Demo]

Animated CSS Tabs

pureTabs [Demo]

pureTabs

Vanilla JavaScript Accessible Tabs [Demo]

Vanilla JavaScript Accessible Tabs

Scifi-style Animated Tabs [Demo]

Scifi-style-Animated-Tabs

Pure CSS Bootstrap Adaptive Tabs – A Bootstrap-inspired tab system built using just CSS and no JavaScript. What unique feature it brings is tabs overfitting in the screen are moved to a dropdown list. [Demo]

Pure CSS Bootstrap Adaptive Tabs

Foldable Tab Bar – A tabs widget based on pure CSS3 and no JavaScript, like various plugins on this list. What makes it interesting is its tabs have a nice-looking foldable transition. [Demo]

Foldable Tab Bar

Awesome CSS Animated Tabs [Demo]

Awesome CSS Animated Tabs

JavaScript Tabifier – An advanced tab plugin built with just JavaScript. It lets you set a default tab, change the tab dynamically, and add onLoad and onClick event callback functions. [Demo]

JavaScript Tabifier

Skeleton Tabs [Demo]

Skeleton Tabs

Tabtastic – Tabtastic is an easy plugin to implement tabs using CSS and JS. It uses semantic markup, is accessible for screen readers, and supports nested tabs on a page. [Demo]

Tabtastic

CSS3 & jQuery Folder Tabs – This easy tutorial (with downloadable code) shares about creating folder tabs using CSS3 and jQuery. It reminds me of tabs shown in browsers like Google Chrome. [Demo]

CSS3 & jQuery Folder Tabs

Tabbed Content [Demo]

Tabbed Content

Equal-width Navigation Tabs – A code snippet, showcasing the use of plain CSS to build equal-width navigation tabs. You can customize the look, but it does not offer advanced options out of the box. [Demo]

Equal-width Navigation Tabs

Tabbed Content with jQuery & CSS [Demo]

Tabbed Content with jQuery & CSS

Twitter Bootstrap Wizard – Twitter Bootstrap Wizard is a plugin to build wizards of a tabbable structure. I noticed you could create just tabs by hiding or removing the next and previous buttons. [Demo]

Twitter Bootstrap Wizard

Pure CSS Tabs [Demo]

Pure CSS Tabs

Just Another CSS Tabs – A beautifully-crafted tab structure built with just CSS, which works on modern browsers. However, unlike few powerful plugins gave above, it has no advanced options. [Demo]

Just Another CSS Tabs

Responsive Accordion to Tabs – Responsive Accordion to Tabs, as the name suggests, works as accordion or tabs based on the screen width. It shows tabs if possible else accordion if size is small. [Demo]

Responsive Accordion to Tabs

CardTabs – CardTabs is an ultra-light tabs plugin based on jQuery, which comes with multiple themes. You can also create new themes and set the active tab dynamically. [Demo]

CardTabs

Aria Tabs [Demo]

Aria Tabs

Minimal & Sexy Tabs – A beautiful, new tabs snippet that is available in two color schemes – light and dark. It is built using jQuery, so it is not as light as some other plugins listed above. [Demo]

Minimal & Sexy Tabs

Tabbed Widget [Demo]

Tabbed Widget

Adaptive Tabs – Adaptive Tabs is a simple, beautiful tabs snippet. Apart from the modern design, it does not have more features like that available in few advanced plugins given above. [Demo]

Adaptive Tabs

Tree Style Tab [Demo]

Tree Style Tab

Tabulous.js [Demo]

Tabulous.js

jQuery Tabs – jQuery Tabs is a simple plugin for creating tabs. As its name suggests, it is built using jQuery, unlike some above-listed plugins that are built with pure CSS or JavaScript. [Demo]

jQuery Tabs

jQuery rTabs [Demo]

jQuery rTabs

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2008 and was updated in April 2018 on the basis of new content.

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