Proposal: MenuBar improvements to match Windows Community Toolkit

[michael-hawker]

Proposal: MenuBar improvements for parity with Windows Community Toolkit

Summary

A while back we deprecated the Menu control in the Windows Community Toolkit when MenuBar was added to WinUI. However, during our PR to remove the feature in our 6.0 release it was brought up that the MenuBar control doesn't have parity with the WinUI one, so we held off on removing it, see discussion in PR.

This proposal is about ensuring we can close the feature gap and remove the Menu control from the Toolkit hopefully later this summer?

Rationale

• Unify developers on a common Menu control for consistency across apps for Users
• Add value from developer input from Toolkit control
• Reduce overhead on the Toolkit code-base

Scope

Capability	Priority
Use Menu like an ItemsControl with ItemsSource and DataTemplating	Must
Show Alt-key Underlines Option (ties into MenuBarItem not having KeyboardAccelerators)	Must
Have MenuBarItem support Click/Command patterns for items or top-level menus see #2740	Must
Showing Alt-key Tooltips Options (old office style)	Should
IsOpened Property for Menu and Selected/Opened MenuItems	Could
Expose MenuFlyout/Tooltip/etc... Styles #1035	Could
Orientation supported see #1528, maybe a different control?	Could

Important Notes

Was noticing some odd behavior in the Gallery, maybe because the menu's aren't at the top-level navigation?

• The menu position when using the keyboard isn't synced with the menubar.
• Right-clicking on menu opened menu as a ContextMenu which appeared odd, especially as it would sometimes flash open the menu in the normal left-click position.
• For instance, when hitting alt, I did not see the keyboard focus rectangle around the menu, even though it was there (theming issue in Gallery or Insider issue?)

Open Questions

[michael-hawker]

FYI @skendrot, please add on anything here if I've missed anything from the previous discussion in the toolkit PR.

[ranjeshj]

@adambarlow FYI

[adambarlow]

Thanks @michael-hawker. These are great additions to consider on the menubar. Let me circle around with folks and get back on potential timelines here.

[michael-hawker]

@adambarlow you can see where I do this comparison investigation from my live stream highlight here. That can also help highlight more easily some of the oddities I encountered in the Gallery app.

[skendrot]

@michael-hawker Looks good! I would say that being an ItemsControl isn't a requirement so long as it can bind items and children (hierarchical items).

[michael-hawker]

Thanks @skendrot, yeah I used the words 'like a' to signify I don't have to see it actually inheriting from ItemsControl (breaking change) as long as we can satisfy those same scenarios for data binding/templating.

[michael-hawker]

Added another gap from #2740 identified about Click/Command for MenuBarItem.

[azchohfi]

@adambarlow any update on this?

[michael-hawker]

Note: We are not migrating the Menu control to the Windows Community Toolkit v8.0 release. Therefore, anyone migrating from our old control to the WinUI 2/3 versions may encounter these issues still. FYI @bpulliam @chigy.