Milan Dinić

<a href="http://blog.milandinic.com/wordpress/plugins/nav-menu-images/" rel="nofollow ugc">Plugin homepage</a> | <a href="http://blog.milandinic.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Plugin author</a> | <a href="http://blog.milandinic.com/donate/" rel="nofollow ugc">Donate</a>
This plugin enables you to upload images for nav menu items on a menu edit screen. By default, those images will be displayed instead of text for respective menu items. Note that after upload, you should set an image as ‘featured’ to be able to display it.
You can also set images that will be displayed only when you hover menu item, or when menu item is of currently displayed page. <a href="http://blog.milandinic.com/wordpress/plugins/nav-menu-images/#how-to-use" rel="nofollow ugc">Read detailed instructions about using plugin</a>.
Developers can use many available filters to make their own way of displaying images, or even create a child class on top of base one. See source code for more ideas.
Although this plugin displays uploaded images out of the box, it will probably not give best possible look, so it’s recommended to create custom CSS styles for affected elements.
Nav Menu Images code is partly based on a code from now defunct plugin Custom Menu Images by <a href="http://huellaspyp.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Anabelle Handdoek 
</a>/<a href="http://8manos.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">∞manos s.a.s</a> and a code from plugin <a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/metronet-profile-picture/" rel="ugc">Metronet Profile Picture</a> by <a href="http://www.ronalfy.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Ronald Huereca</a>/<a href="http://www.metronet.no/" rel="nofollow ugc">Metronet Norge AS</a>.

Nav Menu Images

Great and light weight plugin, without affecting core functionality of WordPress.



Code quality

Does what it's supposed to.
Would love the possibility to choose wether or not to replace all link content - would be nice if the link text would still be shown + adding a custom class to image.

Does what it promise

Works well.

tormorten

A simple plugin to move the WordPress nav-menu item out of Appearance.
This way clients get access to the menus, but can still limit access to the other stuff under “Appearance”.

Move Nav-Menu

Moves the WordPress nav-menu item in admin to a new top level page. Out of "Appearance".

Nav Menu Images vs Move Nav-Menu