Instead of representing open windows as buttons or segments on a bar, it uses large icons on a translucent background to increase readability and add visual appeal.

Both the appearance and functionality of Avant Window Navigator may be customized, and plugins and applets are available, such as to display the progress of a download in Mozilla Firefox or to control a music player like Rhythmbox.

[1] The plugins use the D-Bus IPC system, and applets can be written in C, Python or Vala.

At least version 0.4.0-2 in the Debian repos has either Metacity, xcompmgr, Compiz, xfwm4, KWin or Mutter as a dependency.

[2] Therefore, the user was required to install a compositor,[3] which could tax performance on low-end systems.