21. Procedure-oriented Windows Applications

Chapter 2 - A Quick Start Using the IDE

Visual C++ 6: The Complete Reference
Chris H. Pappas and William H. Murray, III
  Copyright 1998 The McGraw-Hill Companies

Understanding Menus
Before beginning a discussion of each Visual C++ IDE feature, let us examine a few traits that all menu items have in common. For example, there are two ways to access menu items. The most common approach is to place the mouse pointer over the preferred option and click the left mouse button. The second approach is to use the underscored hot key. For example, you can access the File menu directly from the keyboard by simultaneously pressing the alt key and the letter f.
Menu items can be selected using the same sequences described above, and there is often one additional way to select them. You can directly activate some menu items from anywhere within the integrated environment by using their specific hot-key combinations. If a menu item has this capability, the option’s specific hot-key combination is displayed to the right of the menu item on the menu. For example, the first option listed on the File menu is New.... This option can be invoked immediately, avoiding the necessity of first selecting the File menu, simply by pressing ctrl-n.
Additional comments concerning menus: First, if a menu item is grayed, the integrated environment is alerting you to the fact that that particular option is currently unavailable. This means that the integrated environment is lacking some necessary prerequisite for that particular option to be valid. For example, the File menu’s Save option will be grayed if the edit window is empty. The option knows that you cannot save something that does not exist, and it indicates this by deactivating and graying the Save command.
Second, any menu item followed by three periods, ..., indicates an option that, when selected, will automatically display a dialog box or a submenu. For example, the File menu’s Open... command, when selected, causes the Open dialog box to appear.
Finally, you can activate some menu items by clicking on their associated buttons on the toolbars, which are below the main menu bar.
Let’s look at the interesting IDE features that are usually available via a menu choice.

Books24x7.com, Inc 2000 –  


Visual C++ 6(c) The Complete Reference
Visual Studio 6: The Complete Reference
ISBN: B00007FYGA
EAN: N/A
Year: 1998
Pages: 207

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net