[focusgroup] Feedback: Mousepointer hover on other items should re-focus

[johanrd]

Current demo:

See that hovering over other items by the mousepointer does not refocus the items in the current demo:

Screen.Recording.2026-03-09.at.09.33.46.mov

Expected

Navigation Menubar Example from https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/menubar/examples/menubar-navigation/

Screen.Recording.2026-03-09.at.09.36.25.mov

Mac OS:

Screen.Recording.2026-03-09.at.09.37.53.mov

[lukewarlow]

So two things: I don't think mousepointer should ever trigger focus changes. This is just a matter of styling imo.

Secondly, this is out of scope for focusgroup. That is purely about the arrow key navigation behaviour, there's more involved in making menus work and that's out of scope for focusgroup. This is what the dedicated <menulist>/<menubar> proposal is set to address.

[johanrd]

hi. thanks for the comment. Re out of scope: ok, thanks.

I am not sure I follow the comment about focus changes, though: If I first navigate with keyboard, then hover with mouse and then press enter with the keyboard: Which button should receive the Enter event? From both the Navigation Menubar Example and in Mac OS it is clear that it is the last hovered menu item that receives the event:

Screen.Recording.2026-03-09.at.12.17.53.mov

[lukewarlow]

It would be quite novel for the web for the mouse movement to change focus, but you could absolutely be right that in this case it is the correct behaviour. The macOS example does show that maybe it is.

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Though navigation menus (I hadn't spotted that it was one in your first demo too) are a different thing to real menus in the aria sense. This is something the APG gets very wrong.

https://open-ui.org/components/navigation-bar.explainer/ - here's an explainer that touches on that pattern but it's less fleshed out than menu and focusgroup are.

[lukewarlow]

cc @domfarolino might be relevant for the menu elements work.