What do "icon menus" create in Liferay UI?

Icon menus in the Liferay UI are designed to function as dropdown menus that incorporate icons, providing a visually appealing and user-friendly way to access different functionalities or sections within the application. This design choice enhances the navigation experience by combining both textual and visual elements, allowing users to quickly recognize the purpose of each option based on the associated icons.

While a list of multiple icons or a grid arrangement of icons may display icons, they do not provide the interactive dropdown functionality that enables a cleaner and more organized presentation of options. Similarly, icon-based navigation tabs represent a different kind of UI component that is distinct from the dropdown nature of icon menus. The dropdown feature is key in ensuring that users can efficiently access a variety of selections without cluttering the interface with numerous displayed icons at once.