Question

Microsoft’s User Experience Interaction Guidelines give some UI guidelines for when to use a menu button:

http://i.msdn.microsoft.com/Aa511453.command51(en-us,MSDN.10).png

How do I create one of these menu buttons? I’ve found information on

• how to create a split button in Vista and above
• how to create a toolbar button with a dropdown menu
• how to create a regular pushbutton and manually wire up an OnClick event handler that pops up a menu

But is there any standard way to create a button, not in a toolbar, with the little down triangle, that automatically pops up a menu when clicked?

(I’m using Delphi / C++Builder, but other solutions are welcome.)

Answer 1

You can use the OnClick to force the popup, and for consistency don’t use the cursor position, but rather the control position.

procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
  pt : TPoint;
begin
  Pt.X := Button1.Left;
  Pt.Y := Button1.Top+Button1.Height;
  pt := ClientToScreen(Pt);
  PopupMenu1.Popup(pt.x,pt.y);
end;

You can then add the “glyph” using either a Delphi 2010 button, or a previous version TBitBtn and assign the bitmap/glyph property to an appropriate image and align right.