Menus are collections of commands, attribute selections, separators, and other selectable elements. All menus in Windows CE are implemented as top-level pop-up windows that do not support buttons. Although Windows CE supports owner-drawn menu items, it handles them as it would other menu items.
Windows CE does not support menu bars. Instead, it combines the functionality of a menu bar and a tool bar into one control, called a command bar, which makes efficient use of the screen space available on many Windows CE-based devices.
Windows CE supports the following four types of menus:
A pop-up menu is a floating menu that displays commands specific to the object selected by the user, or to the object's immediate context. A pop-up menu appears at the location on the screen where the user accessed it. It is typically used for common commands that rarely change in content and for items that require a small amount of screen space. Restrict the number of items in a pop-up menu to less than 10.
Scrolling menus are unique to Windows CE. With scrolling menus, you do not have to limit the size of a menu to the number of items that fit on the display screen. If a menu is taller than the height of the display area, Windows CE adds scrolling arrows so the user can scroll the menu up and down. If a menu has too many columns to fit within the width of the display area, Windows CE ignores all column breaks and makes the menu a single-column scrolling menu.
A cascading menu is a secondary menu or submenu that appears when a certain option is selected in the parent menu. A triangular arrow next to the parent item in a menu indicates a cascading menu. Windows CE displays cascading menus in alphabetical order. If the height of a cascading menu exceeds the maximum screen height of 240 pixels, the menu adopts a multiple column mode, which shows the remaining menu items in an adjacent column. Use a cascading menu to group related menu items or when a choice leads to a short list of related options.
A pull-down menu contains commands accessed from a command or menu bar. They are commonly used to display text, but can also contain graphics, colors, and shading. When creating a pull-down menu, display all possible command choices on the menu. Items that cannot be chosen due to the state of the application should be grayed out or dimmed. Use a pull-down menu to provide access to a small number of items whose content rarely changes.