The HTML <nav> 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.
| 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. |
| Permitted ARIA roles | None |
| DOM interface | HTMLElement |
Attributes
This element only includes the global attributes.
Usage notes
- Not all links of a document must be in a
<nav>element, which is intended only for 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. - User agents, such as screen readers targeting disabled users, can use this element to determine whether to omit the initial rendering of this 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>
Specifications
| Specification | Status | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| HTML Living Standard The definition of '<nav>' in that specification. |
Living Standard | No change since latest W3C snapshot. |
| HTML5 The definition of '<nav>' in that specification. |
Recommendation | Initial definition |
Browser compatibility
The compatibility table in this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.
| Feature | Chrome | Edge | Firefox | Internet Explorer | Opera | Safari |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic Support | 5 | (Yes) | 4 | 9 | 11.1 | 4.1 |
| Feature | Android | Chrome for Android | Edge mobile | Firefox for Android | IE mobile | Opera Android | iOS Safari |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic Support | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | 4 | 9 | 11 | 4.2 |