GUI with native buttons, instead of a inventory

Question

I'm creating a plugin and I want to show the user a menu. There should be several buttons and sliders available. I have seen that plugins always use the inventory to show something like buttons. Is there no nicer possibility? I don't want to have to click on an item in the inventory, I want buttons like these in the normal Minecraft Options menu. Is that even possible?

Something like this: Minecraft Native Button

Answer 1

No, sadly this isn't possible. Minecraft does not allow you to create such menus, as there is simply nothing on the client that accepts this. Plugins are 100% server sided that cannot change the behaviour of the client in this case. It is very common to create GUI menus with inventories, and I can assure you that players are aware of this limitation and they are perfectly fine with menus like these; almost all servers do this. If you want to create menus with proper styling, consider making a custom resourcepack to make the menus and "buttons" a bit more appealing. For example, this is what I've been able to create with an inventory menu in combination to a custom resourcepack.