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# Create menus

## Introduction
Tiptap comes very raw, but that’s a good thing. You have full control over the appearance of things.

When we say full control, we mean it. You can (and have to) build a menu on your own, but Tiptap will help you wire everything up.

## Menus
The editor provides a fluent API to trigger commands and add active states. You can use any markup you like. To make the positioning of menus easier, Tiptap provides a few utilities and components. Let’s go through the most typical use cases one by one.

### Fixed menu
A fixed menu is one that permanently sits in one location. For example, it's popular to place a fixed menu above the editor. Tiptap doesn't come prepackaged with a fixed menu, but you can build one by simply creating a `<div>` element and filling it with a few `<button>` elements. [See below](#buttons) to learn how those buttons can trigger [commands](/api/commands) in the editor, for example bolding or italicizing text.

### Bubble menu
A [bubble menu](/api/extensions/bubble-menu) is one that appears when selecting text. The markup and styling here is totally up to you.

https://embed.tiptap.dev/preview/Extensions/BubbleMenu?hideSource

### Floating menu
A [floating menu](/api/extensions/floating-menu) appears in the editor when you place your cursor on an empty line. Again, the markup and styling here is totally up to you.

https://embed.tiptap.dev/preview/Extensions/FloatingMenu?hideSource

### Slash commands (work in progress)
Although there isn't an official extension yet, there is [an experiment](/experiments/commands) that allows you to use "slash commands." With slash commands, typing `/` at the beginning of a new line will reveal a popup menu.

## Buttons
Okay, you’ve got your menu. But how do you wire things up?

### Commands
You’ve got the editor running already and want to add your first button. You need a `<button>` HTML tag with a click handler. Depending on your setup, that can look like the following example:

```html
<button onclick="editor.chain().focus().toggleBold().run()">
  Bold
</button>
```

Oh, that’s a long command, right? Actually, it’s a [chain of commands](/api/commands#chain-commands). Let’s go through this one by one:

```js
editor.chain().focus().toggleBold().run()
```

1. `editor` should be a Tiptap instance,
2. `chain()` is used to tell the editor you want to execute multiple commands,
3. `focus()` sets the focus back to the editor,
4. `toggleBold()` marks the selected text bold, or removes the bold mark from the text selection if it’s already applied and
5. `run()` will execute the chain.

In other words: This will be a typical **Bold** button for your text editor.

Which commands are available depends on what extensions you have registered with the editor. Most extensions come with a `set…()`, `unset…()` and `toggle…()` command. Read the extension documentation to see what’s actually available or just surf through your code editor’s autocomplete.

### Keep the focus
You have already seen the `focus()` command in the above example. When you click on the button, the browser focuses that DOM element and the editor loses focus. It’s likely you want to add `focus()` to all your menu buttons, so the writing flow of your users isn’t interrupted.

### The active state
The editor provides an `isActive()` method to check if something is applied to the selected text already. In Vue.js you can toggle a CSS class with help of that function like that:

```html
<button :class="{ 'is-active': editor.isActive('bold') }" @click="editor.chain().focus().toggleBold().run()">
  Bold
</button>
```

This toggles the `.is-active` class accordingly and works for nodes and marks. You can even check for specific attributes. Here is an example with the [`Highlight`](/api/marks/highlight) mark, that ignores different attributes:

```js
editor.isActive('highlight')
```

And an example that compares the given attribute(s):

```js
editor.isActive('highlight', { color: '#ffa8a8' })
```

There is even support for regular expressions:

```js
editor.isActive('textStyle', { color: /.*/ })
```

You can even check nodes and marks, but check for the attributes only. Here is an example with the [`TextAlign`](/api/extensions/text-align) extension:

```js
editor.isActive({ textAlign: 'right' })
```

If your selection spans multiple nodes or marks, or only part of the selection has a mark, `isActive()` will return `false` and indicate nothing is active. This is how it is supposed to be, because it allows people to apply a new node or mark to that selection right-away.

## User experience
When designing a great user experience you should consider a few things.

### Accessibility
* Make sure users can navigate the menu with their keyboard
* Use proper [title attributes](https://developer.mozilla.org/de/docs/Web/HTML/Global_attributes/title)
* Use proper [aria attributes](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Accessibility/WAI-ARIA_basics)
* List available keyboard shortcuts

:::warning Incomplete
This section needs some work. Do you know what else needs to be taken into account when building an editor menu? Let us know on [GitHub](https://github.com/ueberdosis/tiptap) or send us an email to [humans@tiptap.dev](mailto:humans@tiptap.dev)!
:::

### Icons
Most editor menus use icons for their buttons. In some of our demos, we use the open source icon set [Remix Icon](https://remixicon.com/), which is free to use. But it’s totally up to you what you use. Here are a few icon sets you can consider:

* [Remix Icon](https://remixicon.com/#editor)
* [Font Awesome](https://fontawesome.com/icons?c=editors)
* [UI icons](https://www.ibm.com/design/language/iconography/ui-icons/library/)