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Menu System Creation

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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.

In This Section

  • Menu System Design Guidelines
    Discusses how the usefulness of your application can depend on the quality of its menu systems. Investing time in your menus will create a user interface that is easily accepted and quickly learned.

  • How to: Group Menu Items
    Describes how to group menu items to increase readability of your menus.

  • How to: Save a Menu as HTML
    Describes how to save your menu as an HTML file.