Hover intent
A short pause before hover UI reacts, so crossing the screen does not spray open menus and previews.
See it
What it is
Hover intent means waiting for evidence that the pointer meant to stop before opening a menu, preview, or tooltip. A short dwell delay is the simple version; Brian Cherne's hoverIntent jQuery plugin also watches how far the pointer moves between samples, so a slowing cursor counts as intent and a fast pass does not.
Use it for large hover menus, rich previews, and controls that cover other content when opened. Opening should be quick enough to feel responsive, while closing can wait a little longer so the pointer can cross a gap into a submenu. A menu-aim triangle can preserve a sideways submenu while the pointer travels toward it, the trick Ben Kamens made famous in 2013 by pulling apart Amazon's mega dropdown and finding an invisible triangle drawn toward the submenu's corners.
The gotcha is treating hover as the interaction instead of an enhancement. Touchscreens have no stable hover, keyboard users move by focus, and a long delay makes a real target feel broken. Keep click and focus behavior immediate, cancel pending timers on exit, and never add intent delay to basic button feedback.
Ask AI for it
Add hover intent to this desktop menu with pointerenter, pointermove, and pointerleave. Open after the pointer remains within a small area for 200ms, cancel the timer if it keeps moving, and delay close by 350ms so the pointer can reach the submenu. Use the menu-aim triangle technique when a submenu opens sideways. Apply this only inside the CSS media query '(hover: hover) and (pointer: fine)'; open immediately on focus-visible or click, support Escape, and keep the complete menu usable on touch with tap.