MenuBar Object

Parents, Children, Properties, Methods, Events

Purpose: Specifies a horizontal menu bar displayed at the top of a Form .

Description

Unless it is made invisible the MenuBar is always available to the user to initiate actions or to select options. A MenuBar has a fixed position and size.

It is possible to have more than one MenuBar associated with the same Form or SubForm, but only one of them should be Visible at any one time.

The following example illustrates how a menu structure can be built up from a MenuBar. For clarity, the example is indented, and the definition of the Event property is omitted.

      'F'           ⎕WC 'Form' 'Menu Example'
      'F.M'         ⎕WC 'MenuBar'
      'F.M.FILE'    ⎕WC 'Menu' '&File'
      'F.M.MAT'     ⎕WC 'Menu' '&Materials'
      'F.M.MAT.B'   ⎕WC 'MenuItem' '&Brick'
      'F.M.MAT.C'   ⎕WC 'MenuItem' '&Concrete'
      'F.M.MAT.S'   ⎕WC 'MenuItem' '&Stone'
      'F.M.MAT.SEP' ⎕WC 'Separator'
      'F.M.MAT.W'   ⎕WC 'Menu'     '&Wood'
      'F.M.MAT.W.O' ⎕WC 'MenuItem' '&Oak'
      'F.M.MAT.W.T' ⎕WC 'MenuItem' '&Teak'
      'F.M.MAT.W.M' ⎕WC 'MenuItem' '&Mahogany'

Note that putting a Separator (either Style) in a MenuBar has the effect of breaking the bar vertically, that is, the next Menu or MenuItem you add will appear on the left-hand side on the line below.

The EdgeStyle property has no effect on the appearance of a MenuBar or of a direct child of a MenuBar. However, if you want the sub-menus to have a 3-dimensional appearance, you must set the EdgeStyle property of the MenuBar to something other than 'None'.

If the MenuBar is owned by a Form that is the parent of an MDIClient, you can set the MDIMenu property to the name of the Menu you wish to nominate as the window menu. This menu will automatically be updated with the Captions of the child SubForm and may be used to select the currently active one.