Features of VLMenuPlus

This page provides a feature summary for VLMenuPlus. We have covered most significant features of the product to give you a feel of its capabilities. If you need any clarifications regarding features of this product, please send mail to our technical support.

• 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. You can even use Unicode fonts with 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).

• Built-in support for far-eastern languages line Chinese, Japanese and Korean

  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!

• Special support for right-to-left scripts like Arabic, Hebrew and Urdu 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.

• Simple events structure to allow custom drawing of menu items

  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.