Building a Swing Interface - Java 6 - page 288

Menus in Java are supported by three components that work in conjunction with each
other:

JMenuItem —An item on a menu

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JMenu —A drop-down menu that contains one or more JMenuItem components,
other interface components, and separators , lines displayed between items

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JMenuBar —A container that holds one or more JMenu components and displays
their names

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A JMenuItem component is like a button and can be set up using the same constructor
methods as a JButton component. Call it with JMenuItem( String ) for a text item,
JMenuItem( Icon ) for an item that displays a graphics file, or JMenuItem( String , Icon )
for both.

The following statements create seven menu items:

JMenuItem j1 = new JMenuItem(“Open”);
JMenuItem j2 = new JMenuItem(“Save”);
JMenuItem j3 = new JMenuItem(“Save as Template”);
JMenuItem j4 = new JMenuItem(“Page Setup”);
JMenuItem j5 = new JMenuItem(“Print”);
JMenuItem j6 = new JMenuItem(“Use as Default Message Style”);
JMenuItem j7 = new JMenuItem(“Close”);

A JMenu container holds all the menu items for a drop-down menu. To create it, call the
JMenu( String ) constructor with the name of the menu as an argument. This name
appears on the menu bar.

After you have created a JMenu container, call its add( JMenuItem) to add a menu item to
it. New items are placed at the end of the menu.

The item you put on a menu doesn't have to be a menu item. Call the add( Component )
method with a user interface component as the argument. One that often appears on a
menu is a check box (the JCheckBox class in Java).

To add a line separator to the end of the menu, call the addSeparator() method.
Separators are often used to visually group several related items on a menu.

You also can add text to a menu that serves as a label of some kind. Call the
add( String ) method with the text as an argument.

Using the seven menu items from the preceding example, the following statements create
a menu and fill it with all those items and three separators: