C H A P T E R 1 5

Controls

Figure 15-32 Pop-up menus stacked vertically

Regular-size pop-up menu

Pop-Up Menu Implementation

Pop-up menus are available in Interface Builder. To create one using Application Kit programming interfaces, use the NSPopUpButton class.

Action Menus

An Action menu is a specific type of pop-up menu that’s designed to replace an application-wide contextual menu. For example, in its default set of toolbar controls, the Finder includes an Action menu that performs tasks related to the currently selected item, as shown in Figure 15-33.

Figure 15-33 An Action menu in the Finder toolbar

An Action pop-up menu

2008-06-09 | © 1992, 2001-2003, 2008 Apple Inc. All Rights Reserved.

C H A P T E R 1 5

Controls

Important:An Action menu is one of the three window-body controls that can also be used in a window-frame area. To learn more about controls that are designed specifically for use in window-frame areas, see “Window-Frame Controls” (page 249).

Action Menu Usage

Use an Action pop-up menu when you want to provide a visible shortcut to a handful of useful commands. Although contextual menus also provide shortcuts to a small number of commands, the fact that they are hidden makes them difficult for new users to discover and for all users to remember. (You can learn more aboutcontextualmenusin “ContextualMenus” (page 184).)Ifyouarethinkingofproviding(oralreadyprovide) an application-wide contextual menu, you might choose to replace it with an Action menu control in the toolbar.

You can also use an Action menu at the bottom of a list view or source list to provide commands that apply to items in the list. For example, Mail provides an Action menu at the bottom of its source list (shown in Figure 15-34). This Action menu contains commands that act on the account or mailbox selected in the source list.

Figure 15-34 An Action menu can be below a list view or source list

Avoid placing an Action menu control anywhere else in the body of a window. Contextual menus appear when the user selects an object in a window and Control-clicks (or clicks the right button of a properly configured two-button mouse). Because such an object might appear anywhere in a window, there’s no reasonable, consistent location for an Action menu control that contains the commands specific to that object.

2008-06-09 | © 1992, 2001-2003, 2008 Apple Inc. All Rights Reserved.