How to add a custom right-click menu to a webpage?

Question

I want to add a custom right-click menu to my web application. Can this be done without using any pre-built libraries? If so, how to display a simple custom right-click menu which does not use a 3rd party JavaScript library?

I'm aiming for something like what Google Docs does. It lets users right-click and show the users their own menu.

NOTE: I want to learn how to make my own versus using something somebody made already since most of the time, those 3rd party libraries are bloated with features whereas I only want features that I need so I want it to be completely hand-made by me.

Answer 1

According to the answers here and on other 'flows, I've made a version that looks like the one of Google Chrome, with css3 transition. JS Fiddle

Lets start eazy, since we have the js above on this page, we can worry about the css and layout. The layout that we will be using is an <a> element with a <img> element or a font awesome icon (<i class="fa fa-flag"></i>) and a <span> to show the keyboard shortcuts. So this is the structure:

<a href="#" onclick="doSomething()">
  <img src="path/to/image.gif" />
  This is a menu option
  <span>Ctrl + K</span>
</a>

We will put these in a div and show that div on the right-click. Let's style them like in Google Chrome, shall we?

#menu a {
  display: block;
  color: #555;
  text-decoration: no[...]

Now we will add the code from the accepted answer, and get the X and Y value of the cursor. To do this, we will use e.clientX and e.clientY. We are using client, so the menu div has to be fixed.

var i = document.getElementById("menu").style;
if (document.addEventListener) {
  document.addEventListener('contextmenu', function(e) {
    var posX = e.clientX;
    var posY = e.client[...]

And that is it! Just add the css transisions to fade in and out, and done!

var i = document.getElementById("menu").style;
if (document.addEventListener) {
  document.addEventListener('contextmenu', function(e) {
    var posX = e.clientX;
    var posY = e.clientY;
    menu(posX, posY);
    e.preventDefault();
  }, false);
  document.addEventListener('click', function(e) {
    i.opacity = "0";
    setTimeout(function() {
      i.visibility = "hidden";
    }, 501);
  }, false);
} else {
  document.attachEvent('oncontextmenu', function(e) {
    var posX = e.clientX;
    var posY = e.clientY;
    menu(posX, posY);
    e.preventDefault();
  });
  document.attachEvent('onclick', function(e) {
    i.opacity = "0";
    setTimeout(function() {
      i.visibility = "hidden";
    }, 501);
  });
}

function menu(x, y) {
  i.top = y + "px";
  i.left = x + "px";
  i.visibility = "visible";
  i.opacity = "1";
}

body {
  background: white;
  font-family: sans-serif;
  color: #5e5e5e;
}

#menu {
  visibility: hidden;
  opacity: 0;
  position: fixed;
  background: #fff;
  color: #555;
  font-family: sans-serif;
  font-size: 11px;
  -webkit-transition: opacity .5s ease-in-out;
  -moz-transition: opacity .5s ease-in-out;
  -ms-transition: opacity .5s ease-in-out;
  -o-transition: opacity .5s ease-in-out;
  transition: opacity .5s ease-in-out;
  -webkit-box-shadow: 2px 2px 2px 0px rgba(143, 144, 145, 1);
  -moz-box-shadow: 2px 2px 2px 0px rgba(143, 144, 145, 1);
  box-shadow: 2px 2px 2px 0px rgba(143, 144, 145, 1);
  padding: 0px;
  border: 1px solid #C6C6C6;
}

#menu a {
  display: block;
  color: #555;
  text-decoration: none;
  padding: 6px 8px 6px 30px;
  width: 250px;
  position: relative;
}

#menu a img,
#menu a i.fa {
  height: 20px;
  font-size: 17px;
  width: 20px;
  position: absolute;
  left: 5px;
  top: 2px;
}

#menu a span {
  color: #BCB1B3;
  float: right;
}

#menu a:hover {
  color: #fff;
  background: #3879D9;
}

#menu hr {
  border: 1px solid #EBEBEB;
  border-bottom: 0;
}

<link href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.5.0/css/font-awesome.min.css" rel="stylesheet"/>
<h2>CSS3 and JAVASCRIPT custom menu.</h2>
<em>Stephan Stanisic | Lisence free</em>
<p>Right-click anywhere on this page to open the custom menu. Styled like the Google Chrome contextmenu. And yes, you can use <i class="fa fa-flag"></i>font-awesome</p>
<p style="font-size: small">
  <b>Lisence</b>
  <br /> "THE PIZZA-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
  <br /> You can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a Pizza in return.
  <br />
  <a style="font-size:xx-small" href="https://github.com/KLVN/UrbanDictionary_API#license">https://github.com/KLVN/UrbanDictionary_API#license</a>
</p>
<br />
<br />
<small>(The white body background is just because I hate the light blue editor background on the result on jsfiddle)</small>
<div id="menu">
  <a href="#">
    <img src="http://puu.sh/nr60s/42df867bf3.png" /> AdBlock Plus <span>Ctrl + ?!</span>
  </a>
  <a href="#">
    <img src="http://puu.sh/nr5Z6/4360098fc1.png" /> SNTX <span>Ctrl + ?!</span>
  </a>
  <hr />
  <a href="#">
    <i class="fa fa-fort-awesome"></i> Fort Awesome <span>Ctrl + ?!</span>
  </a>
  <a href="#">
    <i class="fa fa-flag"></i> Font Awesome <span>Ctrl + ?!</span>
  </a>
</div>

Answer 2

<script>
function fun(){
document.getElementById('menu').style.display="block";
}

</script>
<div id="menu" style="display: none"> menu items</div>

<body oncontextmenu="fun();return false;">

What I'm doing up here

1. Creat your own custom div menu and set the position: absolute and display:none in case.
2. Add to the page or element to be clicked the oncontextmenu event.
3. Cancel the default browser action with return false.

4. User js to invoke your own actions.

Answer 3

You should remember if you want to use the Firefox only solution, if you want to add it to the whole document you should add contextmenu="mymenu" to the <html> tag not to the body tag.
You should pay attention to this.

Answer 4

A simple way you could do it is use onContextMenu to return a JavaScript function:

<input type="button" value="Example" onContextMenu="return RightClickFunction();">

<script>
 function RightClickFunction() {
  // Enter your code here;
  return false;
 }
</script>

And by entering return false; you will cancel out the context menu.

if you still want to display the context menu you can just remove the return false; line.

Answer 5

I know this has already been answered, but I spent some time wrestling with the second answer to get the native context menu to disappear and have it show up where the user clicked.
HTML

<body>
    <div id="test1">
        <a href="www.google.com" class="test">Google</a>
        <a href="www.google.com" class="test">Link 2</a>
        <a href="www.google.com" class="test">Link 3</a>
        <a href="www.google.com" class="test">Link 4</a>
    </div>

    <!-- initially hidden right-click menu -->
    <div class="hide" id="rmenu">
        <ul>
            <li class="White">White</li>
            <li>Green</li>
            <li>Yellow</li>
            <li>Orange</li>
            <li>Red</li>
            <li>Blue</li>
        </ul>
    </div>
</body>

CSS

.hide {
  display: none;
}

#rmenu {
  border: 1px solid black;
  background-color: white;
}

#rmenu ul {
  padding: 0;
  list-style: none;
}
#rmenu li
{
  list-style: none;
  padding-left: 5px;
  padding-right: 5px;
}

JavaScript

if (document.getElementById('test1').addEventListener) {
    document.getElementById('test1').addEventListener('contextmenu', function(e) {
            $("#rmenu").toggleClass("hide");
            $("#rmenu").css(
              {
                position: "absolute",
                top: e.pageY,
                left: e.pageX
              }
            );
            e.preventDefault();
     }, false);
}

// this is from another SO post...  
$(document).bind("click", function(event) {
  document.getElementById("rmenu").className = "hide";
});

CodePen Example