Windows XP and MainMenu control

Paul, could you put a picture up somewhere to show this? I think that in this case, it would be worth a thousand words.

I can tell you what you should expect, your menus should look like those of notepad.exe.

thanks
- mike

What you are seeing is the difference between a standard Win32 menu bar and a custom menu bar. Windows explorer creates a custom menu bar (which is really a rebar control), but Notepad uses a standard Win32 menu bar. Windows Form apps also use a standard Win32 menu bar, so that is why it looks like Notepad.

Now you ask why it looks different in the designer -- that is because during design time, the main menu is not really a main menu, but a designer (custom built control) that provides the ability to design your menus. This custom designer uses the menu color as its background for the main menu bar when it really should use a different value.

Hope this helps clarify things.
-mark

Well I personally think it depends upon if you are using theming or not. If you goto display properties on your XP computer, and on the Appearance tab, click the Advanced button, you will see a dialog. This dialog shows a preview of a window (un-themed). The main menu bar in this case will be gray, but when you click on the menubar (or select "menu" from the Item dropdown), you will notice that the "Color 1" color box has the actual color of a menu. Basically classic Win32 menus have different colors - one for the menu bar, and one for the menu itself. This corresponds to the Win32 GetSysColor API, using the COLOR_MENUBAR vs. the COLOR_MENU values.

So, it is up to you a bit -- if are creating a XP only app, you might create a custom menu bar and use the Menu color (See the CommandBar sample on http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/ for an example on using a rebar control as your main menu) to mimic the behavior of Windows Explorer. You will want to test out how your app responds though when it is run on Windows 2000 or Windows 98 (system without themes.)

-mark