=====Creating a menu from a resource=====

//by Jon Ripley, June 2006//\\ \\  The normal method of creating a menu is to use the Windows API functions "CreateMenu", "CreatePopupMenu" and "AppendMenu" to create a menu structure:

<code bb4w>
        SYS "CreatePopupMenu" TO m_file%
        SYS "AppendMenu", m_file%, 0, 100, "&New"+CHR$9+"Ctrl+N"
        SYS "AppendMenu", m_file%, 0, 101, "&Open"+CHR$9+"Ctrl+O"
        SYS "AppendMenu", m_file%, 0, 102, "&Save"+CHR$9+"Ctrl+S"
        SYS "AppendMenu", m_file%, 0, 103, "Save &As"+CHR$9+"Ctrl+A"
        SYS "AppendMenu", m_file%, 2048, 104, " "
        SYS "AppendMenu", m_file%, 0, 105, "E&xit"+CHR$9+"Alt+F4"
        SYS "CreateMenu" TO m_main%
        SYS "AppendMenu", m_main%, 16, m_file%, "&File"
        SYS "SetMenu", @hwnd%, m_main%
        SYS "DrawMenuBar", @hwnd%
</code>

However there may be circumstances when the menu has already been designed and its template is contained as a //resource// within a DLL or EXE file. In that case you can create the menu in your program using the resource data. The code example below creates a menu from the resource data for the BB4W IDE menu (in BBCWIN.EXE or BBCWDEM.EXE):

<code bb4w>
        REM Acquire handle to BBCWIN.EXE or BBCWDEM.EXE
        SYS "GetModuleHandle", 0 TO hmod%

        REM Load menu template into memory
        SYS "LoadMenu", hmod%, "BBCWIN" TO hmenu%
        SYS "LockResource", hmenu%
        REM Attach menu to main window
        SYS "SetMenu", @hwnd%, hmenu%
        REM Draw the menu
        SYS "DrawMenuBar", @hwnd%

        REM Your program goes here...

        REM Destroy the menu and free used memory
        SYS "DestroyMenu", hmenu% TO ret%
</code>

Naturally this code will only run within the **BB4W IDE**, because if compiled to an executable file the menu resource data will not be present.\\ \\  To load the menu resource data from a different file (for example a DLL) then replace the call to "GetModuleHandle" with a call to "LoadLibrary" as follows:

<code bb4w>
        SYS "LoadLibrary", "EXAMPLE.DLL" TO hmod%
</code>