Creating a Menu

To create a menu, add the following code to the main method before the shell.open() statement.

//create the menu bar
Menu menu = new Menu(shell, SWT.BAR);
shell.setMenuBar(menu);

//	add File option to it
MenuItem file = new MenuItem(menu, SWT.CASCADE);
file.setText("File");

//set the menu for the File option
Menu filemenu = new Menu(shell, SWT.DROP_DOWN);
file.setMenu(filemenu);

//add MenuItems to the File menu
MenuItem actionItem = new MenuItem(filemenu, SWT.PUSH);
actionItem.setText("Exit");

actionItem.addListener(SWT.Selection, new Listener() {
	public void handleEvent(Event e) {
		display.dispose();
	}
});

When you click on the File-Exit menu item, the application will actually exit the screen.

Let's add an About menu to the application. The About menu will have to Menu items: Help and About. These buttons won't do anything useful at the moment. We'll get to that later.

//add About menu
MenuItem about = new MenuItem(menu, SWT.CASCADE);
about.setText("About");

//set the menu for the About option
Menu aboutmenu = new Menu(shell, SWT.DROP_DOWN);
about.setMenu(aboutmenu);

//add MenuItems to the About menu
MenuItem actionItem2 = new MenuItem(aboutmenu, SWT.PUSH);
actionItem2.setText("Help");

MenuItem actionItem3 = new MenuItem(aboutmenu, SWT.PUSH);
actionItem3.setText("About");

The resulting application looks like this:

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