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Menus in JavaScript

This is a library for menus (both menubars and context-menus), implemented using plain JavaScript. It should work in all modern browsers without requiring any special permissions or server support. The API is similar (and mostly compatible) with that of NWJS and Electron. It is based on Sam Wray's nwjs-menu-browser library.

This makes possible applications that look and feel like native applications, using web APIs (HTML, JavaScript, CSS, DOM), without the overhead of something like Electron. You can use any "embedded" bare-bones web browser, including the Chrome browser with the --app option.

The library implements many of the recommendations for acessibility (ARIA). It has not been tested with a screenreader, but feedback is welcome.

As an example, the DomTerm terminal emulator has a "back-end" written in C, which communicates (using http and websockets) with any modern browser. It can optionally run under Electron, and the code for creating menus (see hlib/domterm-menus.js) is mostly the same whether using Electron to create menus, or using this library in a generic browser.

Advantages and changes compared to the original nwjs-menu-browser:

  • Menu-items and menus can be shared between menus.
  • Keyboard navigation (using arrow keys, Escape, and Enter).
  • Some changes to work better with libraries such as GoldenLayout (for panes and tab) and full-screen.
  • You need to explicitly call Menu.setApplicationMenu (like Electron) - creating the Menu objects is not sufficient.
  • Passes MenuItem as (first) argument to click handler (like Electron).
  • Support visible property on MenuItems (like Electron).
  • Support accelerator property (like Electron) as an alternative to key plus modifiers.
  • Polishing so it works more like other menu systems, including various bug fixes, and working smoothly under Firefox.
  • Styling changes to make it look more native-looking (on Linux or Windows); this is probably a regression on Mac (needs testing).
  • Internal changes, such as when a menu is no longer shown, we remove its elements, rather than just hiding it with css.

Using

Just load or require jsMenus.js and jsMenus.css.

There is API documentation in Documentation.md.

Demo/example

The file demo.html shows many of the features. You can run it in-place after cloning it. You can also view it directly on GitHub using rawgit.

Screenshots

This shows the context menu for the DomTerm terminal emulator. DomTerm is started using the --chrome-app flag, which starts the Google Chrome browser in "application mode", without the default "chrome" (location bar etc).

domterm-menu-bar

TODO

  • Test and polish style on multiple platforms, including MacOS.
  • Internal cleanup - Menu or MenuItem should not have properties that depend on display/navigation state. Specifically, there should be no pointersMto the parent or DOM node, not even temporarily.