Menu Shortcuts

Menu shortcuts provide the ability to activate a menu item by using the keyboard. Menu shortcuts are also known as menu accelerators or keyboard equivalents. Shortcuts have a key modifier that varies among between platforms:

  • Macintosh: <Command>

  • Windows 95: <Control>

  • Motif: <Control>

The java.awt.Toolkit class provides a method that returns the appropriate modifier—Toolkit.getMenuShortcutKeyMask()—should you ever have the need to programmatically determine the modifier key on a particular platform.

Menu items must provide some kind of visual indication that a shortcut may be used to activate the menu item, when applicable. Such visual indication varies among between platforms and is handled in a platform-dependent manner by the AWT. ...

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