Changing What Menu Items Do

You might want to change the actions that a menu item performs. For example, you might want to change the Time menu item you've created so that it displays your own clock application instead of the Windows clock.

The ChangeItemBinding command allows you to assign any standard Viewer command to any Viewer menu item. As for the AppendItem, DeleteItem, and DisableItem commands, you enter the ChangeItemBinding command as part of an exclamation-point footnote in the topic where you want to change the menu item function. The menu item performs the new function until the user quits Viewer or opens a new title. (See “Using Viewer Commands,” earlier in this chapter, for information on entering exclamation-point footnotes.)

The ChangeItemBinding command has the following syntax:

ChangeItemBinding("item-id", "new-command")

The item-id is the ID, enclosed in quotes, you assigned in the AppendItem command.

New-command is the new command, enclosed in quotes, the menu item will perform. It can be any standard Viewer command. See Chapter 18, “Multimedia Viewer Commands,” for a complete list of Viewer commands.

For example, to change the Time menu item created earlier in this chapter so that it uses an application named MYCLOCK.EXE instead of the Alarm Clock, enter the following footnote:

!ChangeItemBinding("time_item", "ExecProgram(`myclock', 0)")