MenuControl In WPF

You will learn in this blog a Menu Control property which is provided by WPF.

WPF provides the Menu Control property. The Menu control derives from HeaderedItemsControl. It Horizontally stack its items. The property that the Menu adds to ItemsControl is the IsMainMenu property.

        <Menu IsMainMenu="True">
            <MenuItem Header="_File" />
            <MenuItem Header="_Edit" />
            <MenuItem Header="_Review" />           
        </Menu>

The MenuItem is a HeaderedItemsControl. The content of the Header property is the caption of the menu. The Itemsof a MenuItems are sub menus. The Icon property is the second content on the left of the caption.

    <Grid>       
        <Menu IsMainMenu="True" >
            <MenuItem Header="_File" />
            <MenuItem Header="_Edit" >
                <MenuItem Header="_Cut" Command="Cut">
                    <MenuItem.Icon>
                        <Image Source="cut.jpg" Width="10"></Image>
                </MenuItem.Icon>
                </MenuItem>
                <MenuItem Header="_Copy" Command="Copy">
                    <MenuItem.Icon>
                        <Image Source="copy.jpg" Width="10"></Image>
                    </MenuItem.Icon>
                </MenuItem>
            </MenuItem>
            <MenuItem Header="_View" />
        </Menu> 
    </Grid>

The Icon property is used to draw a little image on the left. We can resize it with the help of width property. We can use Alt+ E to open the edit menu.
We can make a menu item checkable by setting its IsCheckable property to true.

        MenuItem Header="_Save">
        <MenuItem Header="Save" IsCheckable="True" />
        </MenuItem>

To add a keyboard shortcut to a menu item, add a underscode (_) in front of the character For example ( _Edit). This automatically sets the InputGestureText to an appropriate value. But we can also override this to proposed text by setting this property to a text of our choice.

Complete Program:

<Window x:Class="WpfApplication1.Window1"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    Title="Window1" Height="300" Width="300">
    <Grid>
        <Menu IsMainMenu="True" >
            <MenuItem Header="_File" />
            <MenuItem Header="_Edit" >
                <MenuItem Header="_Cut" Command="Cut">
                    <MenuItem.Icon>
                        <Image Source="cut.jpg" Width="10"></Image>
                </MenuItem.Icon>
                </MenuItem>
                <MenuItem Header="_Copy" Command="Copy">
                    <MenuItem.Icon>
                        <Image Source="copy.jpg" Width="10"></Image>
                    </MenuItem.Icon>
                </MenuItem>
            </MenuItem>
            <MenuItem Header="_View" />
            <MenuItem Header="_Help" />
        </Menu>
    </Grid>
</Window>