HTML <menu> Tag

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The <menu> tag defines a list of commands. It is used for creating context menus, toolbars, listing form controls, and commands.

A context menu consists of a <menu> element that has <menuitem> elements for each selectable option, as well as <hr> elements that break up the content of the menu into sections with the help of separator lines.

A toolbar menu consists of a <menu> element. Here, the content of this element can be described in two ways:

It can contain an unordered list of items that are represented by the HTML <li> element.
It can contain flow content that describes the accessible options and commands.

The <menu> was a deprecated HTML tag in HTML 4.01 and has been redefined in HTML5. It works only for context menus. Use the <ul> element instead.

Each list item in <menu> tag starts with the <li> or the <menuitem> elements.

Syntax

The <menu> tag comes in pairs. The content is written between the opening (<menu>) and closing (</menu>) tags.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Title of the document</title>
    <style>
      menuitem {
        display: block;
      }
    </style>
  </head>
  <body>
    <menu>
      <menuitem>ol - ordered list</menuitem>
      <menuitem>ul - unordered list</menuitem>
      <menuitem>menu - menu list</menuitem>
    </menu>
  </body>
</html>

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Result

Example of the HTML <menu> tag for creating a context menu:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Title of the document</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div style="background:#1c87c9; padding: 20px; text-align:center; color:#ffffff;" contextmenu="menuexample">
      <p>Right-click inside this box to open the context menu</p>
      <menu type="context" id="menuexample">
        <menuitem label="Refresh" onclick="window.location.reload();"></menuitem>
        <menu label="Share on...">
          <menuitem label="Twitter" onclick="window.open('//twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=' + window.location.href);"></menuitem>
          <menuitem label="Facebook" onclick="window.open('//facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=' + window.location.href);"></menuitem>
        </menu>
        <menuitem label="Email This Page" onclick="window.location='mailto:?body='+window.location.href;"></menuitem>
      </menu>
    </div>
    <p><span style="color:red;">Reminder:</span> This works only in Firefox.</p>
  </body>
</html>

Try it Yourself »

These two elements have similar behavior. Both the <menu> and <ul> elements are used to create an unordered lists. The main difference between them is that the <menu> tag contains display items, while the <ul> tag contains interactive ones.

Attributes

Attribute	Value	Description
label	text	Defines a visible label for the menu.
type	popup toolbar context	Defines the type of the menu.

The <menu> tag also supports the Global attributes and the Event Attributes.

How to style <menu> tag?

Common properties to alter the visual weight/emphasis/size of text in <menu> tag:

CSS font-style property sets the style of the font. normal | italic | oblique | initial | inherit.
CSS font-family property specifies a prioritized list of one or more font family names and/or generic family names for the selected element.
CSS font-size property sets the size of the font.
CSS font-weight property defines whether the font should be bold or thick.
CSS text-transform property controls text case and capitalization.
CSS text-decoration property specifies the decoration added to text, and is a shorthand property for text-decoration-line, text-decoration-color, text-decoration-style.

Coloring text in <menu> tag:

CSS color property describes the color of the text content and text decorations.
CSS background-color property sets the background color of an element.

Text layout styles for <menu> tag:

CSS text-indent property specifies the indentation of the first line in a text block.
CSS text-overflow property specifies how overflowed content that is not displayed should be signalled to the user.
CSS white-space property specifies how white-space inside an element is handled.
CSS word-break property specifies where the lines should be broken.

Other properties worth looking at for <menu> tag:

CSS text-shadow property adds shadow to text.
CSS text-align-last property sets the alignment of the last line of the text.
CSS line-height property specifies the height of a line.
CSS letter-spacing property defines the spaces between letters/characters in a text.
CSS word-spacing property sets the spacing between words.