Fireworks navigation bars are quite elegant. Fireworks is a complex graphic imaging and editing program, so basically the sky is the limit as to the colors, fonts, and cool effects that can be used on the navigation bar and buttons. There is a maintenance price for this elegance though. Every time that changes are made to the navigation system such as adding pages or changing links, the Fireworks generated Javascript code for the navigation system has to be hand copied, cut, and pasted into each of the files. It is not a difficult task but it is time consuming.
The navigation bar used in the top navigation of this site is Fireworks generated. Here are two more that I designed. If you click on the static images below a new window will open with the same navigation system that has a working Javascript-generated pop down menu, as it would appear in a web page.
Flash navigation bars can be cool as well. There are not as many options as to the font choices and color effects that can be applied to the states of the buttons compared to Fireworks, but you can create some really cool designs. The following is a navigation scheme in Flash that I toyed with when designing this site. If you click on the static image below a new window will open with the same navigation bar in a functional version, as it would appear in a web page.
