Menu Builder

[Joe Lewis Wilkins]

Jacqi,

Your explanation should appear on the "Menu Builder" Dialog from a Help Button thereon. It would save a lot of newbies gobs of hair follicles. I don't recall how many hours I've wasted coming to terms with these issues; in some instances scraping a project and starting all over again. Of course that happens from time to time anyway; and it's usually a good thing. (smile)

Joe Wilkins

On Jan 11, 2012, at 8:17 PM, J. Landman Gay wrote:

> On 1/11/12 6:51 PM, Pete wrote:
> 
>> In the first screen, I click the New button and on the next screen, give
>> the menu a name and leave the give the menubar a name and uncheck the box
>> "move objects down to accommodate menu bar"  (I want the menu to be in the
>> OS X menu bar).
>> 
>> As soon as I click OK, all the controls on the open stack move up, some of
>> them to be underneath the window title bar.  Uhhh, I asked for them not to
>> be moved down, not to be moved up!
>> 
>> Last time I used the menu builder, I had major problems - every time I
>> opened the stack, it's height increased by the height of the menu -
>> incrementally.  Never did get to the bottom of that, ended up setting the
>> stack height by script to work around it.
>> 
>> Is there another way to create OS X menu bar menus without using the menu
>> builder?
> 
> I find the Menu Builder to be the easiest way to build menus and I use it all the time. I don't find it buggy at all, I think of it as one of the most convenient features LiveCode offers. But you do need to understand how it works, or it will *appear* buggy. What you describe is exactly what is supposed to happen.
> 
> There's info on how LiveCode menus work here: <http://www.hyperactivesw.com/mctutorial/rraboutMenus.html>
> 
> What that mainly says is: to accomodate both Windows (where menus are on the card) and Mac (where menus are in the system menu bar,) LiveCode places your menu group at the top of the card and leaves it there on a Windows machine, or scrolls the card up and out of the way on a Mac. That places the top 26 pixels or so offscreen and out of sight on a Mac. It's a little like setting the scroll of the card to 26; the card top has moved up and out of the window bounds.
> 
> When adding a new menu, you want blank space at the top of the card to allow room for the menu group. If you didn't create your menus first, you may have other objects already in the way. If so, they need to move down to accomodate the new group. If that's the case, you do want to check the box that moves everything down. If you've left room for the group already, skip that checkbox. It's a one-time relocation and very convenient when you decide in the middle of a project that you need a menubar on a screen where there are already objects in the way. I used to use a custom script for that until the Menu Builder came along.
> 
> Whether or not you move your objects down, if the stack has the menu group assigned, the card will scroll upward on a Mac. All your objects will appear to move up when it does that. They haven't really moved; their locations are still the same. But now that the top of the card has moved out of view, the objects have moved along with it and appear to have changed positions. It's visual only.
> 
> Menu builder is convenient, not only because it can create menus quickly, but because it can enter all those tedious switch/case scripts automatically. All I have to do after that is go in and fill in the working parts. It also lays out menu items in the right order so that Preferences and Help manage to show up in the right places cross-platform.
> 
> You can toggle the scroll on and off on a Mac by toggling "preview as menu bar". This just sets the editmenus property of the stack to true, which unscrolls the card. (I often just type the command into the message box.) Unscrolling the card brings the menu group into view, showing it as it will look on Windows, and making it easy to select and edit button scripts or lay out other objects. When I'm done, I set the editmenus to false again and the menu bar scrolls back up out of the way and appears in the system menu.
> 
> Tip: if you add a menu group late in development and need to move objects down to accomodate it, some objects may get pushed off the bottom of the card. You'll need to increase the stack height to adjust for the new locations.
> 
> -- 
> Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
> HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com
> 
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