Proposal: Introduce FooterMenuItemTemplate for NavigationView

[dongle-the-gadget]

Proposal: Introduce FooterMenuItemTemplate for NavigationView

Currently NavigationView.MenuItemTemplate will be applied to every item in MenuItems and FooterMenuItems, which is confusing behavior. While there are issues opened for this before (#3793 and #7147), a closed PR due to "not meeting WinUI 2 bars" (#3811) and a spec document, this is still hasn't implemented yet.

Summary

MenuItemsTemplate will only apply to MenuItems(Source) and FooterMenuItemsTemplate will be applied to FooterMenuItems(Source)

Rationale

• Reduces confusion as MenuItemsTemplate, intuitively, matches MenuItems rather than FooterMenuItems
• Conformance to specification

Open Questions

The PR I linked above had a maintainer saying that the change would be considered for WinUI 3, but it has been over three years since. Are there any further considerations into this?

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Please view the issues below to see if they solve your problem, and if the issue describes your problem please consider closing this one. Thank you!

Open similar issues:

• Proposal: Allow sub-items for NavigationView.FooterMenuItems (#5356), similarity score: 0.77

Closed similar issues:

• Proposal: Enable "bottom-pinned" NavigationMenuItems in the NavigationView control (#375), similarity score: 0.82
• Proposal: ItemTemplate/ItemTemplateSelector support for NavigationViewItem (#2615), similarity score: 0.75
• Proposal: Revisit back and hamburger buttons placement for LeftMinimal NavigationView (#563), similarity score: 0.72
• Proposal: Update NavigationView to use ItemsRepeater (#378), similarity score: 0.72

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