| In order to provide functionality within your application that may need to span a broader scope than a single control within the form, Visual Studio includes the ability to specify several types of menu and display bar classes. Creating Menus and Menu Items Menus are used in order to group commonly available and less used functions into a user -friendly format. The MainMenu , ContextMenu , and MenuItem classes are all derived from the Menu class. There may only be a single main menu for an application, whereas a context menu may be associated with each control if desired, in order to provide commands or information related to the control. Table 2.25 details the important members of the MenuItem class. Table 2.25. Important Members of the MenuItem Class | Member | Type | Description | | Checked | Property | Specifies whether a check mark or radio button should appear near the menu item. | | Click | Event | Fired when the user clicks on the menu item. | | DrawItem | Event | Occurs when a request is made to draw an owner-drawn menu item. DrawItem only occurs when the OwnerDraw property is True. | | Enabled | Property | Specifies whether the menu item is enabled. | | MenuItems | Property | The collection of MenuItem objects associated with this menu item. By assigning a collection of menu items to an individual menu item, you can create a hierarchical submenu. | | OwnerDraw | Property | Specifies whether you can provide custom code to draw a menu item instead of allowing Windows to handle it in a standard way. | | Parent | Property | The parent menu with which this menu item is associated. A parent must be specified for a MenuItem object or else it will not be displayed. | | PerformClick | Method | Fires the Click event for the MenuItem object as if the user has clicked it. | | Popup | Event | Occurs just before displaying a submenu corresponding to this menu item. This event handler is generally used to add, remove, enable, disable, check, or uncheck menu items, depending on the state of an application when they are displayed. | | RadioCheck | Property | Specifies whether the menu item should display a radio button instead of a check mark when its Checked property is set to True. | | Select | Event | Fired when the user selects a menu item by navigating to it. | | Shortcut | Property | The shortcut key combination associated with this menu item. | | Text | Property | The text that appears on the menu item. | StatusBar The StatusBar control is typically used to display information such as a message to the user or application status messages. You may be familiar with the Windows Taskbar, which is similar to a status bar for your operating system. By convention, StatusBar controls are typically docked along the bottom edge of a form and used to provide information and feedback useful to the user. If you set the z-order of the StatusBar control to Send to Back, then the control will not block other controls at the bottom of the form. One of the more important properties of a StatusBar control is the Panels property, which is a collection of StatusBarPanel objects that may be used to divide the StatusBar into multiple functional areas so that one might display the current editing status while another displays the date and time. Table 2.26 details the important members of the StatusBarPanel class. Table 2.26. Important Members of the StatusBarPanel Class | Member | Type | Description | | Alignment | Property | Alignment of the text and icon within the panel: Center, Left, or Right. | | AutoSize | Property | Specifies how the panel is going to size itself. Values are None (the size is fixed when the panel is created), Contents (the panel sizes itself to fit its contents), and Spring (the panel sizes itself to fill the available space). | | BorderStyle | Property | The border style to be used: None, Raised, or Sunken. | | Icon | Property | The icon displayed in the status bar (always displayed to the left of the text). | | Style | Property | Specifies whether the StatusBarPanel object is OwnerDraw or Text (system-drawn). The OwnerDraw style can be used to give custom rendering to a StatusBarPanel object. | | ToolTipText | Property | Specifies the ToolTip. | ToolBar The ToolBar control is usually docked at the top of a form just below its menu bar. Each ToolBar control is typically used to group tools of similar function together, such as text-editing and formatting tools or image-editing tools. If you use the Microsoft Office suite of products, you are likely very familiar with ToolBar controls. If you set the z-order of the ToolBar control to Send to Back, then the control will not block other controls at the top of the form. Table 2.27 details the important members of the ToolBar class. Table 2.27. Important Members of the ToolBar Class | Member | Type | Description | | ButtonClick | Event | Fires when a toolbar button is clicked. | | Buttons | Property | A collection of ToolBarButton objects. Each toolbar button represents a button on the ToolBar object. | | ImageList | Property | The ImageList object storing icons that will be displayed on ToolBarButton objects. | | SendToBack | Method | Sends the toolbar to the back of the z-order. | | ShowToolTips | Property | Specifies whether the toolbar should show ToolTips. | |
