Creating a Visual Basic Menu

Introduction

Menus are vital to any application. Depending on the program, the menus enable the user to physically use your program. The user chooses whichever menu and the program responds accordingly—whether it is showing a dialog box, or changing the color of the words, or exiting.

Menus

Menus allow you to arrange commands in a logical and easy-to-find fashion. A menu shouldn’t contain paragraphs of text, or even long sentences; its sole purpose is to help you navigate through the entire program.

Application Standardization

You may have noticed that the various products in Microsoft’s Office Suite have similar menus; this is true with many other software packages. This standardization technique is pivotal, because it enables the application’s user to learn other applications quickly.

Application Standardization includes the structure of your toolbars, menus, and overall look and feel of your applications. All Windows applications look similar, and yours should be designed to enable the users to learn the application quickly. For example: Most Windows applications have a File menu dealing with file-oriented tasks. Imagine how difficult it would be for a new user to figure out that you have put your printing functionality under a menu called, for example, Technical Tasks -> Hardware -> Printers -> Print.

Our Project

Open Visual Studio and create a new Visual Basic Windows Forms project. Name it anything you like. Add another form to the project so that you have two forms. Add the following objects to Form1:

  • MenuStrip
  • ContextMenuStrip
  • OpenFileDialog
  • SaveFileDialog

I have kept the default names, but you are welcome to rename them; just keep that in mind when we code.

Creating a Menu

  1. Click the MenuEditor component at the bottom of the screen. This will allow you to start entering menu items. Type in Fileand press Enter.

    You now have a File menu!

  2. Click File, then underneath File where it displays text, as shown in Figure 1, type Open.

    Type Here
    Figure 1: Type Here

  3. Repeat the steps to enter the Save, Recent, and Exit items to the File menu.
  4. Add a menu item ‘Edit’ next to File and Add Cut, Copy, and Paste underneath it.
  5. Add a Help menu with About, and Online items.

Now that you have the main menu sorted, let’s take it a step further and add a submenu to the Open menu item. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Click the Open menu item.
  2. To the right of the Open menu item, you should see the ‘Type Here’ section.
  3. Enter Text.
  4. Underneath the Text menu item, enter Other (see Figure 2).

Example Menu items
Figure 2: Example Menu items

Adding Menu Features

Currently, the menus look a bit, well, dull. Let’s add some small but significant changes to the menus.

Adding Alt Key Shortcuts

If you do not know what an Alt key shortcut key is, let me explain: An Alt key shortcut enables you to press the Alt key and then the underlined letter to display the menu. For example: If you press Alt + F, it should open the File menu. To make a letter in the menu display underlined and act as an Alt key shortcut, follow these steps:

  1. Click the desired Menu item.
  2. Open the Properties Window.
  3. Add an ampersand in front of the desired letter to be used as a shortcut. In Figure 3, I have added an ampersand in front of the O in Open.

Alt key shortcut added to Open menu
Figure 3: Alt key shortcut added to Open menu

Adding Keyboard Shortcut Keys to Menus

Shortcut keys are usually a combination of Ctrl and a letter. For example, Ctrl + C is the keyboard shortcut for Copy and Ctrl + V is the Keyboard shortcut for Paste. To add a keyboard shortcut key to a menu item, follow these steps:

  1. Click the desired Menu Item.
  2. Open the Properties Window.
  3. Find the Shortcut keys Property.
  4. Set the desired Shortcut, as displayed in Figure 4.

Adding Shortcut keys to the Cut Menu item
Figure 4: Adding Shortcut keys to the Cut Menu item

The Shortcut will be displayed next to the Menu item’s text.

Adding Icons to Menu Items

To add a small icon next to the Menu Item, follow these easy steps:

  1. Click the desired menu item.
  2. Open the Properties Window.
  3. Select the Icon Property.

Once you click on the button, the Select Resource box will appear. Here, you can select from already added icons inside your project, or add new items to your project’s resources (see Figure 5):

Selecting an Icon for a Menu Item
Figure 5: Selecting an Icon for a Menu Item

Adding a Separator Bar Inside the Menu

To Add a Separator bar to your menu, follow these steps:

  1. Click the Menu Item that you want to separate from other menu items.
  2. When the ‘Type Here’ text appears, look closely. There is a small drop-down arrow next to it, as shown in Figure 2.
  3. Select Separator from the displayed list.

Your finished Menus should look like those shown in Figures 6-8.

File Menu
Figure 6: File Menu

Edit Menu
Figure 7: Edit Menu

Help Menu
Figure 8: Help Menu

In case this article isn’t long enough already, I have added some basic code…

Opening Files

Add the following Namespace and code to make use of the OpenFileDialog to open a file. The code is slightly different for the Text and Other file types (according to the menus):

Imports System.IO
   Private Sub TextToolStripMenuItem_Click(sender As Object, _
      e As EventArgs) Handles TextToolStripMenuItem.Click

      OpenFileDialog1.Filter = "*.txt|*.txt"

      If OpenFileDialog1.ShowDialog = DialogResult.OK Then

         OpenFile(OpenFileDialog1.FileName)

      End If

   End Sub

   Private Sub OpenFile(strFileName As String)

      Dim srStream As New StreamReader(strFileName)

      TextBox1.Text = srStream.ReadToEnd

      srStream.Close()

   End Sub

   Private Sub OtherToolStripMenuItem_Click(sender As Object, _
      e As EventArgs) Handles OtherToolStripMenuItem.Click

      OpenFileDialog1.Filter = "*.*|*.*"

      If OpenFileDialog1.ShowDialog = DialogResult.OK Then

         OpenFile(OpenFileDialog1.FileName)

      End If

   End Sub

I set the Filters for the OpenFileDialog according to which option was selected, and then make use of the Open sub to open the selected file.

Saving a File

Add the following code to save a file:

   Private Sub SaveToolStripMenuItem_Click(sender As Object, _
      e As EventArgs) Handles SaveToolStripMenuItem.Click

      SaveFileDialog1.Filter = "TXT Files (*.txt*)|*.txt"

      If SaveFileDialog1.ShowDialog = _
         Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK Then

         My.Computer.FileSystem.WriteAllText _
            (SaveFileDialog1.FileName, TextBox1.Text, True)

      End If

   End Sub

When the Save Menu item is clicked, a SaveFileDialog opens and writes the content of the Textbox into a filename supplied by the user.

Cut, Copy, and Paste

Add the following code to be able to Cut, Copy, and Paste text:

   Private Sub CopyToolStripMenuItem_Click(sender As Object, _
      e As EventArgs) Handles CopyToolStripMenuItem.Click

      Clipboard.SetText(TextBox1.SelectedText)

   End Sub

   Private Sub CutToolStripMenuItem_Click(sender As Object, _
         e As EventArgs) Handles CutToolStripMenuItem.Click

      Clipboard.SetText(TextBox1.SelectedText)
      TextBox1.SelectedText = ""

   End Sub

   Private Sub PasteToolStripMenuItem_Click(sender As Object, _
         e As EventArgs) Handles PasteToolStripMenuItem.Click

      TextBox1.SelectedText = Clipboard.GetText

   End Sub

Adding a Recently Used List

To create an MRU list, you need to save the current file’s name and location either inside the Windows Registry, a Configuration file, or an ordinary Text file, as I have done.

In this example, I have made use of a file named Recent.txt that is saved inside the Bin folder of my application. The contents of this file get read into a Queue object and populate the list. In saving the MRU list, I have made use of a Queue object to save it into the file named Recent.txt. Here is the code:

   Dim MRUlist As Queue(Of String) = _
      New Queue(Of String)()
   Private Sub SaveRecentFile(strPath As String)

      RecentToolStripMenuItem.DropDownItems.Clear()

      LoadRecentList()

      If Not (MRUlist.Contains(strPath)) Then

         MRUlist.Enqueue(strPath)

      End If

      While MRUlist.Count > 5

         MRUlist.Dequeue()

      End While

      For Each strItem As String In MRUlist

         Dim tsRecent As New ToolStripMenuItem(strItem, Nothing)

         RecentToolStripMenuItem.DropDownItems.Add(tsRecent)

      Next

      Dim stringToWrite As New StreamWriter _
         (System.Environment.CurrentDirectory + "\Recent.txt")

      For Each item As String In MRUlist

         stringToWrite.WriteLine(item)

      Next

         stringToWrite.Flush()

         stringToWrite.Close()

   End Sub

   Private Sub LoadRecentList()

      MRUlist.Clear()

      Try

         Dim srStream As New StreamReader _
            (System.Environment.CurrentDirectory + "\Recent.txt")

         Dim strLine As String

         While (InlineAssignHelper(strLine, srStream.ReadLine())) _
               IsNot Nothing

            MRUlist.Enqueue(strLine)

         End While

         srStream.Close()

      Catch ex As Exception

         MessageBox.Show("Error")

      End Try
   End Sub

      Private Shared Function InlineAssignHelper(Of T) _
            (ByRef target As T, ByVal value As T) As T

         target = value
         Return value

      End Function

      Private Sub RecentFile_click(sender As Object, _
         e As EventArgs)


   End Sub
   Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) _
         Handles Me.Load
      LoadRecentList()

      For Each item As String In MRUlist

         Dim fileRecent As New ToolStripMenuItem(item, Nothing, _
            RecentFile_click())

         RecentToolStripMenuItem.DropDownItems.Add(fileRecent)

      Next
   End Sub

   Private Function RecentFile_click() As System.EventHandler

   End Function

Dynamically Creating Menus

Add the following code to show the second form:

   Private Sub AboutToolStripMenuItem_Click(sender As Object, _
            e As EventArgs) Handles _
            AboutToolStripMenuItem.Click

      Dim f2 As Form2 = New Form2()
      f2.Show()

   End Sub

Add the following code inside Form2 to dynamically add menus onto Form2:

Public Class Form2

   Private Sub MergeMenus()

      Dim mmMain As New MainMenu()
      Dim mmMenuToAdd As New MainMenu()

      Dim miItem1 As New MenuItem()
      Dim miItem2 As New MenuItem()

      miItem1.Text = "File"
      miItem2.Text = "Edit"

      mmMain.MenuItems.Add(miItem1)
      mmMenuToAdd.MenuItems.Add(miItem2)

      mmMain.MergeMenu(mmMenuToAdd)

      Me.Menu = mmMain

   End Sub

   Private Sub Form2_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) _
         Handles MyBase.Load

      MergeMenus()

   End Sub
End Class

This code creates two MainMenu objects and Merges them upon Form_Load.

Conclusion

Menus can be very powerful. Knowing how to use menus in Visual Basic is a crucial skill any developer should have.

Hannes DuPreez
Hannes DuPreez
Ockert J. du Preez is a passionate coder and always willing to learn. He has written hundreds of developer articles over the years detailing his programming quests and adventures. He has written the following books: Visual Studio 2019 In-Depth (BpB Publications) JavaScript for Gurus (BpB Publications) He was the Technical Editor for Professional C++, 5th Edition (Wiley) He was a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for .NET (2008–2017).

More by Author

Get the Free Newsletter!

Subscribe to Developer Insider for top news, trends & analysis

Must Read