Hi auriaks! I like the animation on the page you showed us. Thought i'd try to replicate it with jQuery. A couple of months ago I found some code on the web that resembles it in a way ( unfortunately i can't remember where). I modified it a bit and here's what I have now.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>cool button</title>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-1.4.2.min.js"></script>
<style type="text/css">
html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe,
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre,
a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code,
del, dfn, em, font, img, ins, kbd, q, s, samp,
small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var,
dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li,
fieldset, form, label, legend,
table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: 0;
outline: 0;
font-weight: inherit;
font-style: inherit;
font-size: 100%;
font-family: inherit;
vertical-align: baseline;
}
/* remember to define focus styles! */
:focus {
outline: 0;
}
body {
line-height: 1;
color: black;
background: white;
}
ol, ul {
list-style: none;
}
/* tables still need 'cellspacing="0"' in the markup */
table {
border-collapse: separate;
border-spacing: 0;
}
caption, th, td {
text-align: left;
font-weight: normal;
}
blockquote:before, blockquote:after,
q:before, q:after {
content: "";
}
blockquote, q {
quotes: "" ""
}
/*end Meyer reset*/
body{
background:#313131;
}
#header{
margin-top:30px;
margin-left:30px;
margin-right:30px;
background:#1E1E1E;
color:#373737;
padding-top:20px;
padding-bottom:20px;
text-align:center;
border:1px solid #1A1A1A;
}
h1{
font-size:38px;
}
#navcontainer{
width:660px;
margin-top:60px;
margin-left:auto;
margin-right:auto;
}
#content #nav1 {
height: 2.8em;
overflow: hidden;
border-bottom: 0;
padding-top:0;
padding-right:1.0em;
padding-bottom:0;
padding-left:1.0em;
float: left;
list-style: none;
position: relative;
}
#content #nav1 li, #content #nav1 li a {
position: relative;
float: left;
}
#content #nav1 li {
top: 15px;
margin: 0;
background: none;
padding: 0;
}
#content #nav1 li a {
display: block;
padding-bottom:0.6em;
padding-left:1.6em;
padding-right:1.6em;
padding-top:0.4em;
background: #282828;
color: #646464;
text-decoration: none;
height: 3.0em;
margin-right:0.3em;
border:1px solid #3C3C3C;
}
#content #nav1 li a:hover, #content #nav1 li a:hover span {
background-position: 0 -194px;
color: #9D9F9F;
background-color:#1E1E1E;
}
</style>
<script type="text/javascript"><!--
$(document).ready(function() {
var navDuration = 150; //time in miliseconds
var navJumpHeight = "0.45em";
$('#nav1 li').hover(function() {
$(this).animate({ top : "-="+navJumpHeight }, navDuration);
}, function() {
$(this).animate({ top : "15px" }, navDuration);
});
});//doc ready
// --></script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="header"><h1>Cool buttons</h1></div>
<div id="content">
<div id="navcontainer">
<ul id="nav1">
<li id="active"><a href="#" id="current">Item one</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Item two</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Item three</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Item four</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Item five</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Here is a DEMO (http://azoomer.com/cool-buttons/)