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Working with the Form Designer and the Menu Designer
For the most part these menu items are self-explanatory, so I’m not going to go over each one
right now. Rather, you will learn about each item on the speed menu via the hands-on
approach. To begin, let’s add a main menu to the ScratchPad application we created earlier.
After that we’ll add a speed menu.
Creating a Main Menu
NOTE
The Menu Designer allows you to quickly build any menu. The menu structure for a main
menu consists of a MainMenu component, which is represented by the VCL class TMainMenu.
Each item on the menu is a MenuItem component that is encapsulated in the TMenuItem class.
You don’t need to be too concerned about the intricacies of how these classes work together
because the Menu Designer makes creating menus easy. With that brief overview, let’s add
a main menu to the ScratchPad application.
Adding a Main Menu to the Form
The first thing you must do is add a MainMenu component to your form:
By this time you have had some experience with C++Builder. From this
point on I will abbreviate some of the steps that you need to take to
perform certain actions. For example, from here on I’ll say, “Place a
MainMenu component on the form” rather than “Click on the Standard
tab on the Component Palette. Click the MainMenu button and click on
the form to place the component.” Don’t worry; I’ll still give plenty of
detail when new operations are introduced.
1. Open the ScratchPad project created earlier in the chapter.
2. Place a MainMenu component on the form and change its Name property to MainMenu.
Notice that a MainMenu component has very few properties and no events. All the
work of a menu is done by the MenuItem component.
3. Double-click on the main menu icon. The Menu Designer is displayed.
The Menu Designer looks like a blank form without grid points. The Menu Designer can
be sized in any way you want. The size is just for your convenience and has no bearing on how
the menu operates at runtime. At this point, the Menu Designer is waiting for you to begin
building the menu. Once you have created your first menu, you will find that menu creation
is fairly easy and intuitive.
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