Menu System Creation

Much of the work involved in creating a menu system is done in the Menu Designer, where you create the actual menus, submenus, and menu options.

Creating a menu system involves several steps. Regardless of the size of your application and the complexities of the menus you plan to use, you should:

• Plan and design the system.

  Decide what menus you need, where they appear in the interface, which ones need submenus, and so on.

• Create the menus and submenus.

  Define the menu titles, menu items, and submenus using the Menu Designer.

• Assign tasks to the system so that it does what you want.

  Specify tasks for the menus to perform, such as displaying forms and dialog boxes. Additionally, include setup code and cleanup code if appropriate. Setup code executes before the menu system is defined and can include code for opening files, declaring variables, or placing the menu system on a stack so that it can be retrieved later. Cleanup code contains code to be executed after the menu definition code, and makes menus and menu items available or unavailable for selection.

• Generate the menu program.

• Run the program to test the system.

See Also

Designing Menus and Toolbars | Creating Menus, Shortcut Menus, Menu Items, and Submenus | Compiling an Application | Menu System Design Guidelines