A standard Presentation Manager Action Bar, located immediately below the FS/2 window title bar, provides access to pull-down menus. A pull-down menu will appear whenever a menu item on the Action Bar is selected by clicking either mouse button on the label or by pressing the underlined menu control character (only two menu items have such characters). Use the left and right cursor keys to move from one primary menu item to another. Items on a pull down menu may be accessed by using the up and down cursor keys. For example, to access the Directories pull down menu, click on the menu item Directories.
Action
Bar Menu (Customized Color)
Using the Alt Key
Keystrokes to activate the menu from the keyboard are limited to Alt, Alt+S and Alt+W to permit the use of "Alt plus" keystrokes as hot keys for most of the functions found in the Files menu. To access other primary menu items, simply press Alt, then use the keyboard cursor keys to move the cursor to the desired item.
About Conditional Cascaded Menu Items
Several items on the menus have cascaded submenus. These submenus can have conditional or non-conditional actions. A conditional submenu, denoted by a boxed or button-like arrow, performs a default action if the primary menu item is selected in lieu of the boxed arrow that activates the conditional submenu. A non-conditional submenu has no box or button-like border around the arrow and activates the submenu if the primary menu item is selected, performing no default action. There is a setup option on page 2_2 of the Settings notebook, Conditional Cascaded Menus, that may be used to convert a number of the cascaded menus to/from a conditional submenu.
In the example below, Directories->Window Options->Expand Control is a non-conditional submenu and simply expands to show the submenu items when clicked. However, Directories->Window Options->Tree View has a conditional submenu. To select the submenu items, the boxed arrow must be clicked. Otherwise, when clicked, it simply executes the default action.
Example
of Two Types of Cascaded Menus
Accessing Online Help for Menu Items
For online help with menu items, highlight the menu item of interest and then push the help function key (F1). Alternatively, hold the LMB down when selecting an menu item and push F1. Please note that this method of accessing menu help only works for the Action Bar and context menus associated with the main application window. Menus in windows such as DirMarks and ZipView are not associated with the help table and therefore only the basic help for that window appears when using the F1 help key.