Going a little further, I am using this as my main navigation, so how would I set the class to “active” ?

Something along these lines i guess :

<txp:article_custom limit="8" wraptag="ul" break=""> <li<some_if_statement> class="active"</end_if_statement>><a href='<txp:permlink />'><txp:title /></a></li> </txp:article_custom>

But I am struggling to find the right if statement…

Any ideas?

if I get it right, you want to make “active” the current article class? You could do it like this:

<txp:etc_query wraptag="ul"
 data='<txp:article_custom limit="100" album=''<txp:custom_field name="album" />''>
   <a href=''<txp:permlink />''><txp:title /></a>
 </txp:article_custom>'
 query='a[@href=''<txp:permlink />'']'>
    <li>{preceding-sibling::a[1]}</li>
    <li class="active">{.}</li>
    <li>{following-sibling::a[1]}</li>
</txp:etc_query>

This will output something like

<ul>
<li><a href="...">[previous]</a></li>
<li class="active"><a href="...">[current]</a></li>
<li><a href="...">[next]</a></li>
</ul>