Computer Programming Concepts and Visual Basic David I. Schneider

Here, the menu bar contains two menu items (Font and Size), referred to as top-level menu
items. When the Font menu item is clicked, a dropdown list of two second-level menu items
(Courier and TimesRm) appears. Although not visible here, the dropdown list under Size contains
the two second-level menu items “12” and “24”. Each menu item is treated as a distinct
control that responds to only one event—the click event. The click event is triggered not only
by the click of the mouse button, but also for top-level items by pressing Alt+accessKey and
for second-level items by just pressing the access key. The click event for the Courier menu
item in Figure 10-11 can be activated directly by pressing the shortcut key F1.
FIGURE 10-11 A Simple Menu
Menus are created with the Menu Editor window available from the Tools menu on the
Visual Basic main menu bar. Figure 10-12 shows the Menu Design window used to create
the menu in Figure 10-11. Each menu item has a Caption property (what the user sees) and
a Name property (used to refer to the item in the code.) For instance, the last menu item in
Figure 10-12 has Caption property “24” and Name property “mnu24”. The following steps
are used to create the Font-Size menu:
FIGURE 10-12 The Menu Editor Window Used to Create the Menu in Figure 10-11
1. Type &Font into the Caption box and type mnuFont into the Name box.
2. Click on the Next button.
3. Click on the Right Arrow button. (This creates the ellipses and indents the next
menu item, which will be a second-level item.)
4. Type &Courier into the Caption box and type mnuCourier into the Name box.
5. Click on the arrow to the right of the Shortcut box and select F1 from the dropdown
list.
6. Click on the Next button.
7. Type &TimesRm into the Caption box and type mnuTimesRm into the Name
box.
8. Click on the Next button:
Five Additional Objects 309