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Motif and CDE 2.1 Style Guide Reference

Menu Bar (Menu Type)

Reference

Description

A menu bar is a menu displayed across the top of the client area of a window.

A menu-bar system is a spring-loaded system that consists of a menu bar and any menus cascaded from it.

Figure 41. Menu Bar.




View figure.

When to Use

Required
Provide a menu bar if you provide any of the action choices included in the File menu, other than Close or Exit.

Required
Provide a menu bar if you provide any of the action choices included in the View menu.

Recommended
Provide a menu bar if you provide any of the action choices included in the Help menu.

Recommended
Provide a menu bar when a window will provide more than six action choices.

Guidelines

Required
Place only cascading choices in a menu bar.

Required
A cascading choice in a menu bar leads to a pull-down menu.

Required
In conjunction with the Menu Guidelines reference page, use Table 16 to decide which choices to include in a menu bar and how to organize them.

Table 16. Menu-Bar Choices


 Mnemonic Item Keyboard Function
Required F File AltF
Recommended S Selected AltS
Required E Edit AltE
Optional I Insert AltI
Required V View AltV
Recommended O Options AltO
Optional o Tools AltO
Required W Window AltW
Required H Help AltH

Recommended
Add any application-specific menu-bar choices between the last standard menu-bar choice that is provided and the Help choice.

Recommended
When a window has both a menu bar and push buttons, all action choices available on push buttons should also be included on a pull-down menu (or a menu cascaded from one) available in the window.

Required
In a menu bar, make < move the cursor to the choice to the left, wrapping at the left edge within the menu bar.

Required
In a menu bar, make > move the cursor to the choice to the right, wrapping at the right edge within the menu bar.

Required
In a menu bar, make V activate the cursored cascading choice, display the associated pull-down menu, and move focus to it.

Required
When focus is in a control in a window and the user presses F10 or Shift Menu, navigate to the first item in the menu bar.

Required
If a window has a menu bar, but focus is in a different spring-loaded system originating from the client area of that window, then make pressing F10 or Shift Menu deactivate the spring-loaded system before navigating to the first item in the menu bar.

Required
If the focus is in a menu-bar system, make pressing F10 or Shift Menu deactivate the system.

Required
Place the menu bar at the top of the client area of a window and extend it the width of the entire window.

Required
Align menu-bar items horizontally and lay them out left to right. For information on bidirectional and vertical language support, see Chapter 11.

Recommended
Allow a user to hide the menu bar if the functionality it provides is available through other means (for example, push buttons and pop-up menus).

Required
Do not display a graphic (in particular, a down-arrow graphic) along with a cascading choice in a menu-bar item.

Essential Related Topics

For more information, see the Cascading (Choice Type), Pull-Down Menu (Menu Type), and Spring-Loaded (Control Type) reference pages.

Supplemental Related Topics

For more information, see the Choice, Edit (Menu), File Menu, Help (Menu/Action Choice), Options (Menu), Selected Menu, and View Menu reference pages.

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