<menu> HTML menu element
Baseline
Widely available
This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.
The <menu> HTML element is described in the HTML specification as a semantic alternative to <ul>, but treated by browsers (and exposed through the accessibility tree) as no different than <ul>. It represents an unordered list of items (which are represented by <li> elements).
Try it
<div class="news">
<a href="#">NASA's Webb Delivers Deepest Infrared Image of Universe Yet</a>
<menu>
<li><button id="save">Save for later</button></li>
<li><button id="share">Share this news</button></li>
</menu>
</div>
.news {
background-color: bisque;
padding: 1em;
border: solid thin black;
}
menu {
list-style-type: none;
display: flex;
padding: 0;
margin-bottom: 0;
gap: 1em;
}
Attributes
This element also accepts the global attributes.
compact-
This Boolean attribute hints that the list should be rendered in a compact style. The interpretation of this attribute is browser-specific. Use CSS instead: to give a similar effect as the
compactattribute, the CSS propertyline-heightcan be used with a value of80%.
Usage notes
The <menu> and <ul> elements both represent an unordered list of items. The key difference is that <ul> primarily contains items for display, while <menu> represents a toolbar containing commands that the user can perform or activate.
Note:
In early versions of the HTML specification, the <menu> element had an additional use case as a context menu. This functionality is considered obsolete and is not in the specification.
Examples
Toolbar
In this example, a <menu> is used to create a toolbar for an editing application.
HTML
<menu>
<li><button onclick="copy()">Copy</button></li>
<li><button onclick="cut()">Cut</button></li>
<li><button onclick="paste()">Paste</button></li>
</menu>
Note that this is functionally no different from:
<ul>
<li><button onclick="copy()">Copy</button></li>
<li><button onclick="cut()">Cut</button></li>
<li><button onclick="paste()">Paste</button></li>
</ul>
CSS
menu,
ul {
display: flex;
list-style: none;
padding: 0;
width: 400px;
}
li {
flex-grow: 1;
}
button {
width: 100%;
}
Result
Technical summary
| Content categories |
Flow content. If the element's children include at least one
|
|---|---|
| Permitted content |
Zero or more occurrences of |
| Tag omission | None, both the starting and ending tag are mandatory. |
| Permitted parents | Any element that accepts flow content. |
| Implicit ARIA role |
list
|
| Permitted ARIA roles |
directory, group,
listbox, menu, menubar,
none, presentation,
radiogroup, tablist,
toolbar or tree
|
| DOM interface | HTMLMenuElement |
Specifications
| Specification |
|---|
| HTML # the-menu-element |
Browser compatibility
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menu
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Legend
Tip: you can click/tap on a cell for more information.
- Full support
- Full support