VLMenuPlus is a drop-in menu enhancer for your applications. With VLMenuPlus you don't have to change the way you have used menus till now. Simply drop this control on the main form of your application and run the application. The menus will auto-magically be transformed ... without need of writing even a single line of code.

Now look at what VLMenuPlus offers.

·         Supports a range of development environments
VLMenuPlus Version 5, support many development environments. You can use it to enhance application menus in VB.Net, C#.Net, VB classic, VC++ and Delphi. If you are using any other development environment, please contact our technical support for assistance in using VLMenuPlus in your choice of development tool.

·         Menu item and background bitmap support
VLMenuPlus provides an option to add icons next to menu items. It, in fact, automatically adds icons next to a large number of commonly used menu items like Open, Close, Cut, Copy, etc. The full list of menu captions for which it provides automatic bitmap support is available in the online help.

VLMenuPlus provides this feature for many European and far-eastern languages.

You can select from five sets of icons (including Office 2003 and Office XP styled icons) for your menus, or if you want, you can specify your own set of icons for your application menus.

While talking of bitmaps, let us tell you that you can have fancy backgrounds for menus by specifying a bitmap to be drawn in the popup menu background.

·         Color customization
VLMenuPlus will automatically use the color settings as specified in the desktop settings. Your application, while looking smart, honours the color scheme chosen by the user.

In situation, when you must have your own way regarding menu colors, you can override the default colors and specify colors of your choice for various parts of the menu.

·         Status bar help and tool-tip support
Many applications provide brief help messages in the status bar as the cursor moves over menu items. Visual Basic menus do not provide any event where you can add this feature. VLMenuPlus, not only provides this event, it can automatically detect the status bar in your application and start displaying help messages for a large number of commonly used menu captions. The full list of menu captions for which it provides automatic help display is available in the online help.

VLMenuPlus provides this feature for many European and far-eastern languages.

VLMenuPlus also provides tool tip support for menu items. This is an absolutely unique feature of VLMenuPlus. Incidentally, color customization is available for tool tips as well.

·         Highlight styles
Arrival of Office XP completely changed the way menus were presented to the users. The new highlight style was a widely appreciated feature. Office 2003 went even further, with better looking menu icons and gradient backgrounds. VLMenuPlus offers Office XP as well as Office 2003 style menu highlighting. In fact it offers many more options. You can choose from a wide variety of gradient filled highlight styles with VLMenuPlus.

·         Customize menu font
VLMenuPlus lets you customize menu font... globally as well as at individual menu item level. This is your first step toward internationalizing your application.

You can also use unicode text and unicode font for menus and deliver applications with menus in practically any language.

·         Right-to-Left support
When you are developing application for scripts like Arabic, Hebrew and Urdu, you will like the menus to have right to left support. With VLMenuPlus, this support is just a click away. Simply set the RightToLeft property to True, and your application menus are now drawn right to left (and yes, the menu will automatically shift to the right end of the form!)

Features

·         Supports a range of development environments
VLMenuPlus 5, support many development environments. You can use it to enhance application menus in VB.Net, C#.Net, VB classic and VC++. If you are using any other development environment, please contact our technical support for assistance in using VLMenuPlus in your choice of development tool.

·         Look ma, no code!
VLMenuPlus is a "drop-in" menu enhancer for your applications. You simply don't need to write code or change the way you have programmed for menus. VLMenuPlus works with native menus. Simply drop the control on the main form of the application, set properties of VLMenuPlus to choose the look that you want for your application menus and run the application.

·         Icons in the menu
How often have you have desired icons in your menus similar to MS Office™ applications? VLMenuPlus lets you incorporate icons/bitmaps for your application menus with minimal code.
Moreover, for a large number of commonly used menu items (for example, Open, Close, Cut, Copy, etc.) VLMenuPlus has a built-in library of icons, and it automatically displays those icons for appropriate menu items. Besides English, this support is available for Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Spanish language menus.

You get to choose from five built-in sets icons including Office 2003 and Office XP styled icon sets.

·         Office2003 and Office XP style menus on 9x and NT platforms
VLMenuPlus provides support for Office 2003 and Office XP style menus on 9x and NT platforms as well.

·         Bitmap background for pop-up menu
VLMenuPlus lets you go way beyond anything that you might have seen in menus. You have the option to specify a bitmap for menu background.

·         Tool tips for menus
VLMenuPlus will enable display of tool tips for menu items. You don't have to rely on status bar to display short help message for menus. Appearance of the tool tips can be customized to match your application user interface.

·         Desktop color matching
VLMenuPlus automatically uses color schemes set for the desktop. Though, you can as easily use your own color scheme for the menus.

·         Highlight styles
VLMenuPlus supports a variety of highlight styles that help you build great looking menus for your applications.

·         Status help display
Similar to the built-in icon library, VLMenuPlus has a built-in library of help messages for a large number of commonly used menu items. This support is available for Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Spanish menus.
(If you want this support to be extended to any other language, please contact our technical support. With your help we can add this feature for other languages as well).

Status help display capability goes beyond this - it is automatic. VLMenuPlus will automatically locate the status bar of your application (if you are using standard status bar) and display help in the status bar as the highlight moves over menu items.

Even when you are using a non-standard status bar control, status bar help message can still be displayed with just a single line of code.

·         Menu font customization
Customize menu font globally as well as for individual menu items using VLMenuPlus.

·         Hiding Keyboard cues
VLMenuPlus automatically hides keyboard cues on Win2K and Win XP, as per the desktop settings.

·         Unicode support
VLMenuPlus lets you use Unicode text and font for your application menus on all Win32 platforms. This opens up enormous possibilities in terms of internationalization and localization of your application.

Automatic menu icon display and status bar help display works for unicode menus as well (for the languages specified earlier).

·         Far-eastern language support
VLMenuPlus offers native as well as non-native support for far eastern languages like Chinese, Japanese and Korean. For example, it can be used to enhance menu on a Japanese version of windows. Also, it will let you display Japanese menus on a US-English version of windows!

·         Right to left menus
VLMenuPlus provides support for right to left menus. This is a very important feature if you want to use it for languages like Arabic, Hebrew and Urdu.

·         Simple programming interface
With VLMenuPlus, more often than not, you won't need to write any code to get the visual effects that you want for your application's menu. On the rare occasions when you do need to write code, you will find VLMenuPlus' properties, methods and events elegant and simple to use.

·         Design time menu wizard
Design time menu attribute wizard of VLMenuPlus 5, allows you to specify menu help messages, tool tips and icon to be used with a menu item at design time through an easy to use interface. This wizard ensures that you don't need to write code even for your application specific menus for which VLMenuPlus does not have built-in icon and help support.

·         Custom drawn menus
VLMenuPlus provides an extensive event framework for letting you draw your own menu items. Though we consider this as an advanced feature, the sample application that ships with VLMenuPlus has a demonstration of this feature.

·         Integrated on-line help
VLMenuPlus ships with a detailed integrated on-line help. So, while programming help on any property or method is just F1 away.

·         Sample
VLMenuPlus setup ships with an extensive sample program (with source) demonstrating the usages of the control.