Common Tasks with Commands, Menus, and Toolbars

A menu contains commands and command groups. Every command structure in the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) starts with a menu. This section describes some common Visual Studio menu scenarios in which you may want to create your own custom menus.

In This Section

• How to: Create Reusable Groups of Buttons
  Describes how to group command items so that they can be included on multiple menus.

• How to: Create and Handle Commands in VSPackages (C#)
  Describes how to add a command to an existing menu and handle it in a VSPackage.

• How to: Create Menus, SubMenus, and Shortcut Menus
  Describes how to create different types of menus.

• How to: Create Toolbars in the IDE
  Describes how to create a toolbar on the IDE.

• How to: Create Toolbars for Tool Windows
  Describes how to create a toolbar on a tool window.

• How to: Add Icons to Commands on Toolbars
  Describes how to add an icon to a command on both a toolbar and a menu.

• How to: Add Menu Controllers to Toolbars
  Describes how to create a toolbar button with a drop-down arrow next to it, which opens a drop-down menu.

• How to: Dynamically Add Menu Items
  Describes how to create a dynamic menu list such as a Most Recently Used (MRU) list.

• How to: Change the Text of a Menu Command
  Describes the use of the TextChanges flag to enable a menu item to be changed dynamically.

• How to: Change the Appearance of a Command
  Describes how to dynamically enable or disable a command.

• How to: Update the User Interface
  Describes how to force an update of the user interface to reflect recent changes.

Related Sections

• How VSPackages Add User Interface Elements to the IDE
  Describes how the Visual Studio architecture enables a VSPackage to add UI elements to the IDE.

• Commands, Menus, and Toolbars
  Explains how to create a UI that includes menus, toolbars, and command combo boxes.