Spectrum

In my mind, navigation is one of the most important areas of web design.

There are a strict set of rules which govern how a navigation should be laid out, and there are certain practices that users have become used to.
Now, this is all very well. I do not challenge the concept that navigations should be similar across sites, so that users are not left searching for a way to the next page.
But I do not think that this means your navigation shouldn’t stand out!
I always try to design functional navigations which give an interesting user interface, and spectrum is a perfect example of this.

For a long time users have been used to rollover images, or hover states.
A change in the part of the nav they have hovered, to show that they are targeting that area.
This is excellent, but the transitions are instant, and sharp. Obviously just one stationary image to the next. So in this theme i set out to improve that experience.

This is why, in spectrum, when the user hovers over a navigation item, it glows!

It doesn’t glow too slowly, so as to confuse the user as to wether or not anything has happened, nor to quick for the user to see the effect. It glows at just the right speed for the user to appreciate the slightly un-expected behavior!

The effect is achieved using the brilliant jQuery Library, and I am thinking of including it in a number of upcoming themes.

It should also be noted that i went to a lot of trouble to make sure that the effect degrades beautifully, in browsers that have javascript turned off, and on pages in which the plugin kills the menu animation.
This means that none of your users ever lose the functionality or feedback of the menu!