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TMainMenu
by Tracey Sandbrook


Here is a basic tutorial on how to use a TMainMenu.
 

  1. Adding Menu Items
  2. Inserting Menu Items
  3. Deleting Menu Items
  4. Creating a SubMenu
  5. Menu Templates
  6. Rearranging Menu Items
  7. Creating an OnClick event for a MenuItem
  8. Switching Between Two Menus
  9. Splitting Your Menu
  10. Setting Which Menu Is Used On A Form
  11. Checking and Unchecking Menu Items
  12. The RadioItem Property
  13. Why Do Some Menu Items Have '...' After Their Captions?
  14. Using The Default Property
  15. Assigning Short-cut Keys
  16. Enabling and Disabling MenuItems
  17. Visible and Invisible MenuItems
   
Adding Menu Items
 
To add MenuItems you must use the Menu Designer.
The Menu Designer can be opened in two ways. The easiest way is to double-click on the TMainMenu component on your form. The second way is to double-click on the column to the right of the Items property in the Object Inspector, or click on the ellipses (...) button you will find in that column.
 
The first time you open the Menu Designer, you will see a blank item in the top left-hand corner of the form. Select this blank item, by clicking on it. Now you can edit that items Caption property. This will appear as the text in the Item. Press Enter.
 
 
Inserting Menu Items
 
To insert a menu item you can choose 'Insert' from the pop-up menu (this is the menu that appears when you right-click in the menu designer), or you can press the 'Insert' button on your keyboard.
 
 
Deleting Menu Items
 
This can be done using similar actions to those for inserting an item. First you will need to click on a menu item so that it is selected. Now, either click on the 'Delete' option in the pop-up menu or press the 'Delete' key on your keyboard.
 
 
Creating a SubMenu 
 
 
 
  In the image above, the SubMenu is the part of the menu that lists 'Hypertext Document', 'Text Document', and 'Rich Text Document'.
SubMenus have a couple of uses, including that SubMenu's can be used where adding a Dialog would usually be necessary, but SubMenu's will simplify the job. This is the case in the image above. Here, I want to give the users of my program the option to create three different types of documents. If I want to give them that option, they have to have some way of choosing the option that they want. One way to do this would be to load a dialog when they click on 'New...'. This dialog would have to have a ComboBox, ListBox, RadioGroup or some other component to list the options. Also an OK or Cancel button, maybe a Label, maybe a background image...but whatever, it is much simpler to use a Submenu. Though, of course, this may not always be the best option.
 
Anyhow, these are the steps to follow to create a SubMenu.
Right-click on the item that you wish to extend and choose the 'Create Submenu' option. The short-cut keys for this action are Ctrl + Right Arrow Key.
You can also create Submenus off Submenus.
 
 
Menu Templates
 
Menu Templates make reusing often-used menu drop-down lists easy.
Borland has given us some examples that we can use.
To see these, we can insert them by right-clicking and choosing 'Insert from Template'.
Next we choose the template we wish to insert and click OK.
You must make sure that you insert these templates in the right place. To place these templates make sure a blank item at the top of the menu is selected when you right-click and insert a template.
If you wish to put the template in a drop-down list from your menu then select the item you wish to insert the template above, and then right-click. The template will be created as a submenu.
 
If, for some reason, you reuse certain drop-down lists through-out more than one of your applications or menus, you can save it as a template to save yourself from having to re-type and organize it.
Right-click on the piece of the menu that the drop-down list appears from. In the image shown for creating a submenu, if I wanted to make the 'New' submenu into a template I would right-click on 'New'. If I wanted to save that entire drop-down list I would right-click on 'File'. Once the pop-up menu appears, choose 'Save As Template'.
The Save Template dialog will appear. Type the text you want your template to be named.
 
To delete a template, right-click anywhere in the Menu Designer, and choose 'Delete Template'.
Select the template you wish to remove and click OK. Make sure you have the correct template selected because there is no prompt.
 
 
Rearranging Menu Items
 
The easiest way to rearrange menu items is to drag and drop the items where you want them. Items can even be dragged from one drop-down list to another, or as new titles for drop down lists.
 
 
Creating an OnClick event for a MenuItem
 
All you have to do is double-click on the item you wish to have an OnClick event.  Or you can click on the item and go to the Events page of the Object Inspector and double-click in the right column for the OnClick event listing.
OnClick events can also be added when the Menu Designer is not open, and you are browsing the menu on your form. Click on an item and the Code Editor will appear.
 

Switching Between Two Menus
 
When you have more than one menu on your form, you can easily switch between them without having to return to your form.
You can switch menus by right-clicking and choosing 'Select Menu'. Now you are able to choose from a list of the MainMenu components on the current form.
 
 
Splitting Your Menu
 
Most drop-down menu's have more than one type of item. For example, lets look at the File drop down list in Microsoft WordPad. The first group contains four options for working with your documents, the second group contains printing options, next is a list of the four most recently opened documents, and last is Exit.
Splitter bars have been used to make it less confusing to use the options.
You are almost sure to want to do this yourself some time when you are working with menus.
They can be added by setting the Caption of a MenuItem to '-'.
That will create a horizontal line. Vertical lines can also be set.
 
  
 
  There is more than one way to split your menu's. A horizontal line can be used, and is the most used option. Menus can also be split into more than one column, with or without a bar to split them.
 
To split a menu into more than one column with a bar, set the Break property to mbBarBreak. You set the Break property for the MenuItem that you wish to be at the top of the new column.
 
To split a menu into more than one column without a bar, set the Break property to mbBreak. For this setting also, you set the Break property for the MenuItem that you wish to be at the top of the new column.
 
 
Setting Which Menu Is Used On A Form
 
To set this option use the forms Menu property. The drop-down list in the right-column for this property in the Object Inspector will list the Menus available. You can choose from menus on the current form, or menus that aren't being used by another form in your project.
 
The code to do this is:
 
procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
   Form1.Menu := MainMenu2;
end;
 
 
Checking and Unchecking Menu Items
 
In some situations you will want to check or uncheck menu items to show that something is on or off, visible or invisible, etc.
The example below shows how this can be done:
 
Add a MenuItem with a Caption of 'Speed Panel' to your MainMenu. It should be automatically named 'SpeedPanel1' for you by Delphi.
Set SpeedPanel1's Checked property to True.
Add a TPanel component to your form (Panel1).
 
Put the following code in the OnClick event for SpeedPanel1, that is, your MenuItem:
 
procedure TForm1.SpeedPanel1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
   SpeedPanel1.Checked := not SpeedPanel1.Checked;
   Panel1.Visible := not Panel1.Visible;
end;
 
Now run your project and click on your MenuItem a couple of times.
 
 
The RadioItem Property
 
This Checked option is much the same as the RadioItem option. Where the Checked option will put a tick to the left of your MenuItem, the RadioItem property will put a black circle, much like a bullet, to the left of the MenuItem.
The RadioItem property works like a TRadioGroup component, where only one item can be selected at once. Each menu drop-down or submenu can have one set of RadioItems.
 
Here is an example on how to use this property:
 
Drop a MainMenu component onto your form and double-click on it to open the Menu Designer.
Set the first MenuItem to have a Caption of 'Form Color'. In the drop-down list coming off FormColor1 (the MenuItem that you just created) create three more MenuItems:
BtnFace
Blue
Yellow
 
Set BtnFace1's Checked property to True.
Select all three of these MenuItems at once. This can be done by clicking on 'BtnFace', holding your Shift key down, and clicking on 'Yellow'.
Set the RadioItem property for these three MenuItems to True.
 
Insert this code for the correct MenuItems:
procedure TForm1.BtnFace1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
   Form1.Color := clBtnFace;
   BtnFace1.Checked := True;
end;
 
procedure TForm1.Blue1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
   Form1.Color := clBlue;
   Blue1.Checked := True;
end;
 
procedure TForm1.Yellow1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
   Form1.Color := clYellow;
   Yellow1.Checked := True;
end;
 
 
Why Do Some Menu Items Have '...' After Their Captions?
 
This means that a dialog will appear after you click on this item. For example, in Delphi New and Open have '...' after them. This means that the New and Open dialog's will appear when you click on them. New Application and New Form don't have these, as a dialog does not appear after you click on them, but a New Application or Form will.
 
 
Using The Default Property
 
This is an interesting option which I believe would be a great time saver, especially for those large menus with many items.
 
When the Default property is set to True for a MenuItem, that MenuItem will be executed when the user double-clicks on the parent item.
 
For example, look at the image below:
 
   
 
 When you double-click on 'File' the 'Open' item will be executed. This saves your users having to browse through the menu.
 
Each sub-menu is allowed one Default item. The Default item will be in Bold, as in the image above, where 'Open' is Bold.
 
 
Assigning Short-cut Keys and Creating Hot Keys
 
This means that when certain key combinations are pressed, the MenuItem using those keys will be activated.
Again we will look at the image above. Notice that New has 'Ctrl + N' next to it, Open has 'Ctrl + O'. This means that when Ctrl + N is pressed, the OnClick event for New will be executed, and when Ctrl + O is pressed, the OnClick event for Open will be executed.
To set these shortcuts:
Click on the MenuItem you wish to assign a shortcut to, then select a key combination from the ShortCut property drop-down list.
 
Hot Keys can also be added. This is done by typing an ampersand (&) before the letter we want to be the hot key.
Look at Delphi, for example. To execute New Application by hot-keys, we must press
Alt + F to open the File menu, then T to execute the New Application item.
No two hot keys can be the same within a submenu, but the hot key can be used in another submenu as well.
For example, to have a MenuItem that said 'File', we would type '&File' in the Caption.
For 'New Application' we would type New &Applica&tion'.

 
Selecting Multiple MenuItems
 
Selecting multiple MenuItems is rather simple.
In the example above we clicked on the first item that we wanted to select, held down the Shift key and then clicked on the last item we wanted to select, thus selecting everything between these two items.
You can also hold Ctrl and click on any item you want to select.
If you have a long list of items you wish to select, minus one or two in the middle, it may be the simplest option for you to select all the items (using the first method above with Shift) and then hold Ctrl and click on those you wish to deselect.
These selected items can then be dragged, deleted, have properties edited, etc.
 
 
Enabling and Disabling MenuItems
 
Any MenuItem with text in it can be disabled or enabled. This can be done by setting the Enabled property to True or False.
 
This can be done with code like this:
 
procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
   MyMenuItem1.Enabled := False;
end;
 
If a MenuItem is made Enabled, Disabled, Invisible or Visible and it has a sub-menu, the sub-menu will be affected by it. For example, if the main MenuItem is Disabled, the sub-menu will not appear, naturally this is the same if the MenuItem is invisible.
 
 
Visible and Invisible MenuItems
 
Just like Enabling and Disabling MenuItems, any MenuItem can be made Invisible or Visible. This can be done using the Visible property.
 
The code to do this is:
 
procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
   MyMenuItem1.Visible := False;
end;
 

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