[w3ctag/design-reviews] Other Spec Review: HTML menu elements (Issue #1242)

dbaron created an issue (w3ctag/design-reviews#1242)

### Specification

https://whatpr.org/html/12011/interactive-elements.html#the-menubar-element from https://github.com/whatwg/html/pull/12011 although some aspects are a bit out of date relative to the explainer, which is more current

### Explainer

https://open-ui.org/components/menu.explainer/

### Links

- Previous early design review, if any: none
- An introduction to the feature, aimed at unfamiliar audiences: https://open-ui.org/components/menu.explainer/#introduction
- A description of the problems that end-users were facing before this proposal: Menus on web sites often work in inconsistent ways and often in ways that do not serve the needs of users who depend on the keyboard or on assistive technology.
- Alternatives considered: See the "General questions" section of [the explainer](https://open-ui.org/components/menu.explainer/#introduction) and its many subsections.
- Examples of how to use the proposal to solve the end-users' problems: https://open-ui.org/components/menu.explainer/#examples--code-snippets
- What do the end-users experience with this proposal: Hopefully users will experience menus on the web that have more consistent patterns between sites in terms of supporting the same (and good) mouse behaviors, keyboard navigation and focus behavior, and exposure to assistive technology, and other accessibility characteristics.
- User research you did to validate the problem and/or design, if any: none (though there were some points in the process where we did research about patterns used on existing sites to answer specific design questions, but I'd need to dig around to find it)
- Web Platform Tests: https://wpt.fyi/results/html/semantics/menu/


### The specification

- [x] Follows the [Web Platform Design Principles](https://www.w3.org/TR/design-principles/).
- [ ] Includes Security and Privacy Considerations sections based on answers to the [Security/Privacy Questionnaire](https://www.w3.org/TR/security-privacy-questionnaire/).

### Where and by whom is the work is being done?

- GitHub repo: https://github.com/openui/open-ui (explainer, issues) and https://github.com/whatwg/html/tree/menu-elements (spec, currently on branch)
- Primary contacts:
  - @dbaron, Google, current primary editor of explainer and PR
- Organization/project driving the specification: Google
- This work is being funded by: Google
- Primary standards group developing this feature: [OpenUI CG](https://open-ui.org/)
- Group intended to standardize this work: mostly [WHATWG](https://whatwg.org/), a few small pieces (pseudo-classes/pseudo-elements) in [CSSWG](https://www.w3.org/groups/wg/css/)
- Incubation and standards groups that have discussed the design:
  - OpenUI CG has discussed many aspects of the proposal; see [list](https://open-ui.org/components/menu.explainer/#openui)
  - CSSWG/WHATWG/OpenUI task force has discussed [a few issues about pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements](https://open-ui.org/components/menu.explainer/#csswg--whatwg--openui-task-force)
  - ARIA WG had a breakout discussing the proposal; see notes in https://github.com/w3c/aria/issues/2782
  - Pointer Events WG has discussed click event retargeting, see [minutes](https://www.w3.org/2026/02/11-pointerevents-minutes.html#6a6e) and https://github.com/w3c/pointerevents/pull/637
  - WHATWG has discussed in https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11729
    - Note that at the https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/12441 we discussed advancing the proposal to [Stage 2](https://whatwg.org/stages#stage2).  Some issues were raised (most significantly https://github.com/openui/open-ui/issues/1456) but I think the sense of the room is that once those were addressed (which at this point they mostly have been) the next request to advance to Stage 2 would likely succeed.
 
Also cc: other contributors @domfarolino @scottaohara @lukewarlow @josepharhar @mfreed7 @davidsgrogan


### Feedback so far

- Multi-stakeholder feedback:
  - Chromium comments: https://chromestatus.com/feature/5206029088063488
  - Mozilla comments: `https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/NNN` (TBD, will file request soon and edit).  Note Mozilla participants have been involved in some of the above standards discussions.
  - WebKit comments: `https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/NNN` (TBD, will file request soon and edit)   Note WebKit participants have been involved in some of the above standards discussions.
- Major unresolved issues with or opposition to this specification:
  - https://github.com/openui/open-ui/issues/1456 (calling this "unresolved" is a little questionable at this point -- I think we generally have agreement on it, and the Chromium prototype and the explainer are updated to mostly reflect that, but the spec PR is not yet updated so I wanted to call it out)
    - https://github.com/openui/open-ui/issues/1468 is a sub-point that came out of that that needs some further discussion
  - https://github.com/openui/open-ui/issues/1312 (the Pointer Events WG didn't like what the OpenUI CG originally wanted.  I think it should be easier to resolve the way the Pointer Events WG wants after the above nesting changes, but I haven't done so yet.)
- Status/issue trackers for implementations: [ChromeStatus](https://chromestatus.com/feature/5206029088063488) (Mozilla TBD) (WebKit TBD)

### You should also know that...

_No response_

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