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Make A Navbar With Tailwind CSS Like A Pro With The Help Of These 6 Tips

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As a FrontEnd developer, you might have heard about Tailwind CSS, a utility-first CSS framework that helps you quickly design and customize your UI components. In this article, we will explore how to create a navbar UI component with Tailwind CSS like a pro.

What is Tailwind CSS?

Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework that provides a set of pre-defined CSS classes that you can use to style your HTML elements. Unlike other CSS frameworks, Tailwind CSS doesn't have any pre-built UI components, but it provides you with a set of low-level utility classes that you can use to build your own custom UI components.

The description of navbar UI component

A navbar is a UI component that is used to provide navigation links to the user. It usually contains a logo, a set of navigation links, and some other optional elements like search, login, or language switcher. A navbar is an essential part of any website or web application, and it should be designed in a way that is easy to use and visually appealing.

Why use Tailwind CSS to create a navbar UI component?

Tailwind CSS provides a set of pre-defined utility classes that you can use to style your navbar UI component quickly. It also provides you with a set of responsive utility classes that you can use to make your navbar responsive and adapt to different screen sizes. With Tailwind CSS, you can create a navbar UI component that is both visually appealing and easy to use.

The preview of navbar UI component

To create a navbar UI component with Tailwind CSS, we will use a combination of utility classes like flex, justify-between, items-center, text-white, bg-gray-800, and hover:bg-gray-700. The result will be a simple and elegant navbar that looks like this:

Free download of the navbar's source code

The source code of navbar UI component

To create the navbar UI component, we will use HTML and Tailwind CSS classes. Here is the source code:

<nav class="shadow-lg border-t-4 border-blue-500">
  <div class="max-w-6xl mx-auto px-4">
    <div class="flex justify-between">
      <div class="flex space-x-7">
        <div>
          <a href="#" class="flex items-center py-4 px-2">
            <img src="https://cdn.discordapp.com/avatars/699203703164633120/2f34ca5ca47fc1e257cc77e7ef97f02d.png" alt="Logo" class="rounded-full h-8 w-8 mr-2" /><span class="font-semibold text-gray-500 text-lg">MrDark</span>
            </a>
        </div>
      </div>
      <div class="hidden md:flex items-center space-x-1">
        <a href="" class="py-4 px-2 text-blue-500 font-semibold">Home</a>
        <a href="" class="py-4 px-2 text-gray-500 font-semibold hover:text-blue-500 transition duration-300">Projects</a>
        <a href="https://www.buymeacoffee.com/MrDark" class="bg-purple-600 text-white px-3 py-2 rounded-md text-sm font-medium hover:bg-purple-800 transition duration-300">Donate</a>
      </div>
      <div class="mr-10 flex md:hidden">
        <button class="inline-flex items-center justify-center p-2 rounded-md text-dark">
          <svg stroke="currentColor" fill="currentColor" stroke-width="0" viewBox="0 0 512 512" height="1em" width="1em" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
            <path d="M32 96v64h448V96H32zm0 128v64h448v-64H32zm0 128v64h448v-64H32z">
            </path>
          </svg>
        </button>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
  <div class="hidden">
    <div class="px-2 pt-2 pb-3 space-y-1 sm:px-3 md:hidden">
      <a href="" class="cursor-pointer text-white text-blue-500 block px-3 py-2 hover:text-blue-500 rounded-md text-base font-medium transition duration-300">Home </a>
      <a href="" class="cursor-pointer text-white block px-3 py-2 hover:text-blue-500 rounded-md text-base font-medium transition duration-300">Projects</a>
      <a href="" class="cursor-pointer bg-purple-600 text-white block px-3 py-2 hover:bg-purple-800 rounded-md text-base font-medium transition duration-300">Donate</a>
      </div>
  </div>
</nav>

How to create a navbar with Tailwind CSS?

Now, let's dive into the steps to create a navbar UI component with Tailwind CSS.

Step 1: Set up your HTML structure

The first step is to set up your HTML structure for the navbar. Here is a sample HTML code for the navbar:

<nav class="bg-gray-800">
  <div class="max-w-7xl mx-auto px-4 sm:px-6 lg:px-8">
    <div class="flex items-center justify-between h-16">
      <div class="flex-shrink-0">
        <img class="h-8 w-8" src="https://tailwindui.com/img/logos/workflow-mark-indigo-500.svg" alt="Workflow">
      </div>
      <div class="hidden md:block">
        <div class="ml-10 flex items-baseline space-x-4">
          <a href="#" class="text-white hover:bg-gray-700 px-3 py-2 rounded-md text-sm font-medium">Dashboard</a>
          <a href="#" class="text-white hover:bg-gray-700 px-3 py-2 rounded-md text-sm font-medium">Team</a>
          <a href="#" class="text-white hover:bg-gray-700 px-3 py-2 rounded-md text-sm font-medium">Projects</a>
          <a href="#" class="text-white hover:bg-gray-700 px-3 py-2 rounded-md text-sm font-medium">Calendar</a>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</nav>

In this HTML code, we have a nav element with a bg-gray-800 class that sets the background color of the navbar to gray. Inside the nav element, we have a div element with a max-w-7xl class that sets the maximum width of the navbar to 7xl (a Tailwind CSS pre-defined screen size). Inside this div element, we have another div element with a flex class that sets the display property to flex. This flex class is used to create a horizontal layout for the navbar.

The next step is to add your logo and navigation links to the navbar. In our sample HTML code, we have an img element with a h-8 and w-8 class that sets the height and width of the logo to 8. We also have a set of a elements with text-white, hover:bg-gray-700, px-3, py-2, rounded-md, text-sm, and font-medium classes that set the text color, background color, padding, border radius, font size, and font weight of the navigation links.

Step 3: Make your navbar responsive

The last step is to make your navbar responsive using Tailwind CSS responsive utility classes. In our sample HTML code, we have a hidden md:block class that hides the navigation links on small screens and shows them on medium and larger screens. We also have a ml-10 class that adds a margin to the left of the navigation links on medium and larger screens.

Conclusion

In this article, we have explored how to create a navbar UI component with Tailwind CSS like a pro. We have learned how to use a combination of utility classes to create a simple and elegant navbar that is both visually appealing and easy to use. With Tailwind CSS, you can quickly design and customize your UI components and create a responsive and adaptive UI for your website or web application.