Stephens' C# Programming with Visual Studio® 2010 24-Hour Trainer

Making Menus

In addition to buttons, labels, and textboxes, menus are one of the most common user inter-

face elements in interactive programs.

This lesson explains how to add menus and context menus to forms and catch their events so

your program can take action when the user selects menu items.

CREATING MENUS

To create a menu, simply drop a MenuStrip control on a form. By default, the MenuStrip is

docked to the top of the form so you don’t really need to position it carefully. Just double-click

the Toolbox’s

MenuStrip tool and you’re set.

Unlike most controls, the

MenuStrip appears in the

Component Tray below the form in addition to on the

form itself. Figure 5-1 shows the SimpleEdit program

in the Form Designer. Below the form you can see

the Component Tray containing a

MenuStrip and a

StatusStrip.

When you select a

MenuStrip in the Form Designer, the

menu bar at the top of the form displays a Type Here

box. Click that box and type the menu’s caption to cre-

ate a main menu.

If you create a main menu entry and select it, the Form

Designer displays a new Type Here box to let you create

menu items (see Figure 5-2).

Continue entering text in the Type Here boxes to build

the whole menu structure. Figure 5-3 shows the Edit

menu for a new version of the SimpleEdit program.

Notice that the menu contains several cascading sub-

menus. The Offset submenu is expanded in Figure 5-3.

FIGURE 51

5

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