What is a Menu?
A menu is an user interface element that displays a list of options (called menu items) for the user to select. In general, the user is supposed to select only one menu item, and "selecting" it means activating it*. Once activated, a menu item performs an action or changes the screen.
*In some cases, "selecting" a menu item doesn't mean activating it. See below.
There are many kinds of menus. Many desktop applications have a horizontal menu bar in their main window that work as a menu, but whose items don't perform any significant action. Instead, when a menu item is hovered on by the mouse cursor, they display a vertical submenu with items that can be activated, or items that display other submenus. There are also context menus displayed by right clicking things on the screen.
In some user interfaces, clicking on a button displays a menu as a dropdown.
In smartphone apps, websites made for smartphones, and, regrettably, some desktop applications, there's a button with an icon of 3 horizontal lines that displays the main menu of the application. This technique is called a hamburger menu. It saves space by hiding the menu, but it wastes my time by hiding the menu.
In some video-games, the first thing you see before even starting the game is the start screen with a menu that includes the item "start game." Traditionally, the cursor used to select items in this sort of menu wasn't a mouse cursor, since game consoles don't have mouses, but instead a special menu cursor that showed which item was selected, and you need to press a button to activate it.
"Selecting" Menu Items
As you may have noticed, "selecting" an item in a menu can mean two things, depending on context.
If we're talking about doing things with a mouse, or with a touchscreen, which is generally the case, then "selecting" means clicking or touching on it, and this action immediately activates the item.
When operating a computer using just the keyboard, or in video-games with joysticks, there is no mouse cursor to tell you what menu item you will activate. Instead, there's a special menu cursor, or some sort of hint that that menu item is... is... uh... selected. There is no other way to call it. We could say it has "keyboard focus" on computers, but that doesn't make a lot of sense for video-games.
Keyboard Navigation
It's possible to navigate through menus on a desktop computer without using the mouse.
If an application that has a main menu, press and hold the Alt key to display lines under a letter of each of the main menu items, such as File. As you can see, "F" is underlined, so you would press Alt+F to select the File menu item.
Then you use the arrow keys to navigate around the menu. Navigating from one item to another changes which item is selected. Pressing the Enter key activates the menu item.
For context menus, it's also possible to open them using just the keyboard. First, you need to make sure the correct graphical user interface element has keyboard focus. You do this by pressing the tab key or shift tab to cycle around objects on the screen, and using the arrow keys to navigate lists of items. When the correct item has keyboard focus, you press the menu key on your keyboard. This key is between the Alt and Ctrl keys on the right side of the keyboard. Then you can navigate the items in the context menu using the arrow keys.
With a mouse, would close a floating menu by clicking outside of the menu on the screen. To close a menu with the keyboard, just press Esc.
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