A good navigation system has always been important for websites.  Not only does it open up a website’s contents to its visitors, but also provides an opportunity to stand out if it can be designed and made to function well. Previously a good way of displaying “cool” navigation was by creating it in Flash. However, that posed a problem since Flash wasn’t a good method for displaying the important links to the search engines. Now, thanks to jQuery, several stylish navigation options like sliding, rollover, dropdown etc. can be achieved without using Flash. Here’s an ultimate list of 45 easy to use plugins and tutorials for you to choose from and use them to create the “cool” navigation for your website you always wanted to.

jQuery LavaLamp

Tabbed Box with CSS & jQuery

jQuery & CSS Dropdown Menu

Smooth Animated Menu with jQuery

jQuery File Tree Navigation

Coda Slider Effect

(Another) Scrollable Plugin for jQuery

Superfish

jQuery Link Nudging

jQuery Accordion Tutorial

‘Mootools Homepage’ Inspired Navigation Effect Using jQuery

jQuery Garage Door Effect

Sliding Tabs

jQuery for Background Image Animation

Keypress Navigation using jQuery

Fading Menu Replacing Content

Navigation Menu with CSS & jQuery

Slick Animated Menu with CSS & jQuery

Horizontal Scroll Menu with jQuery

jQuery ListNav Plugin

Vimeo Style Top Navigation

Animated Menus using jQuery

jQuery Random Link Color Animation

Digg Header Style Menu

CSS Dock Menu

Tabbed Content Area with CSS & jQuery

Multi-Level CSS Dropdown Menu, Improved with jQuery

Rounded Corner CSS Navigation with jQuery

jQuery (mb)Menu 2.7

Apple Style Menu Improved with jQuery

jQuery Tabbed Side Menu

CSS Sprites 2

jqDock

Color Fading Menu with jQuery

Floating HTML Menus with jQuery & CSS

Tim Van Damme

Kwicks for jQuery

dwFadingLinks

Stylish Navigation Menu with jQuery

Animated Dropdown Menu with jQuery

idTabs

jQuery Tabbed Navigation

jQuery Feed Menu

Sliding jQuery Menu