Designing Menus

  • Article

Menus are collections of commands, attribute selections, separators, and other selectable elements. All Windows CE menus are implemented as top-level, pop-up windows that do not support buttons. Although Windows CE supports owner-drawn menu items, it handles them as it would other menu items.

Windows CE does not support menu bars. Rather, it combines the features of a menu bar and a toolbar into one control called a command bar, which makes efficient use of the screen space available on Windows CE–based devices. The following screen shot shows a command bar.

Windows CE supports four menu types:

  • Pop-up

    A pop-up menu is a floating menu that displays commands that are specific to the object selected by the user or to the object's immediate context. A pop-up menu appears at the location on the screen where the user accessed it. It is typically used for common commands that rarely change in content and for items that require a small amount of screen space. It is recommended that you restrict the number of items in a pop-up menu to less than 10.

  • Scrolling

    A scrolling menu is a menu that adds scroll arrows to enable a user to scroll the menu up and down if a menu exceeds the display area height. Scrolling menus are unique to Windows CE. With scrolling menus, you do not have to limit the size of a menu to the number of items that fit on screen.

  • Cascading

    A cascading menu is a secondary menu or submenu that appears when a certain option is selected in the parent menu. A triangular arrow next to the parent item in a menu indicates a cascading menu. Windows CE displays cascading menus in alphabetical order. If the height of a cascading menu exceeds the maximum screen height, the menu adopts a multiple-column mode if sufficient screen space is available and scrolls on a Pocket PC to show the remaining menu items. Use a cascading menu to group related menu items or when a choice leads to a short list of related options.

  • Pull-down

    A pull-down menu contains commands that are accessed from a command or menu bar. It is commonly used to display text, but it can also contain graphics, colors, and shading. When creating a pull-down menu, display all possible command choices on the menu. Items that cannot be chosen due to the application state should be dimmed. Use a pull-down menu to provide access to a small number of items with content that rarely changes.

 Last updated on Friday, April 02, 2004

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