Standard Windows menu bars in Windows Forms

Question

I noticed that adding a MenuStrip (from the Toolbox) to my form design doesn't yield a menu bar like the one seen in many native Windows applications. Instead I get a menu bar like Visual Studio's own. None of the style settings for MenuStrip appear to mimic the much more common native menu bar.

Is there a way to add a menu bar to my Windows Forms application that looks the same as the one you see in Notepad, Task Manager and others? (Preferably with the designer, but I wouldn't mind adding it programmatically either.)

Screenshot for illustration:

Answer 1

This is easy.

Goto your Toolbox, right click anywhere inside and select "Choose Items". When the dialog loads and appears, scroll down til you see MainMenu. Add that to the toolbox, and you've got yourself a native Menu Bar!

Happy coding!

Answer 2

You can do this by setting your form's Menu property, like this:

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    this.Menu = new MainMenu();
        MenuItem item = new MenuItem("File");
        this.Menu.MenuItems.Add(item);
            item.MenuItems.Add("Save", new EventHandler(Save_Click));
            item.MenuItems.Add("Open", new EventHandler(Open_Click)); 
        item = new MenuItem("Edit");
        this.Menu.MenuItems.Add(item);
            item.MenuItems.Add("Copy", new EventHandler(Copy_Click));
            item.MenuItems.Add("Paste", new EventHandler(Paste_Click)); 
        // etc ...
}

private void Save_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    // save
}

These menus will look like "normal" system menus.

I couldn't find any designer support for this, though. In my defense, I didn't try real hard.

Answer 3

Instead of using a the MainMenu component you can create your own renderer for the MenuStrip component. The advantage here is being able to add images to MenuStripItem objects. Here is the pastebin for the custom renderer:

NativeRenderer

There are different themes that can be applied in the constructor of the renderer. Try them all to see the native themes. To use this renderer simply set the instance to the MenuStrip Renderer property:

menuStrip.Renderer = new NativeRenderer([theme]);

Answer 4

I normally set the MenuStrip's RenderMode to System which gives a minimalist, single colour menu (no gradients or anything decadent like that).

If that does not go far enough, then you'll likely have to jump through some low-level hoops to get what you want.