This article documents shows you how to change the appearance of a menu or sub-menu, like the File or Edit menu.

If you are trying to customize the appearance of a menu item such as the File → Open item, you need to use the The available action bar configuration options.

For each item in an action bar menu or sub-menu, you can:

  • Specify an icon

  • Determine whether the menu item displays text or not

You need the configuration file prefix to change the appearance of a menu. To figure out the configuration file prefix, you can enable the Debug actions menu item, as described in How to find the IDs of the available actions, tool bars, menu bars and pop-up menus.

Specify a menu icon

You specify a menu icon with the prefix.menu.xxx.smallIcon key. Replace the xxx part in the key with a dot-separated list of the menu path items leading to the menu.

For example, to define an icon for the sub-menu Map → Data, use the property: prefix.menu.Map.Data.smallIcon = path/to/the/icon.png.

Display or hide menu item text

You hide the name of a menu item by setting the value for key prefix.menu.xxx.showActionName to false. You must replace the xxx part in the key with a dot-separated list of the menu path items leading to the menu.

For example, to remove the text for the sub-menu Map → Data, use the property: prefix.menu.Map.Data.showActionName = false.

Example: replacing the Edit menu in the drawing toolbar with an icon

By adding the following lines to the configuration file of the drawing add-on:

Program: The configuration options for the edit menu of the drawing bar
TLcyDrawingAddOn.drawingToolBar.menu.Edit.smallIcon = edit
TLcyDrawingAddOn.drawingToolBar.menu.Edit.showActionName = false

you replace the standard Edit menu from the drawing bar with an icon:

drawing bar custom edit menu
Figure 1. Drawing tool bar where the Edit menu only shows an icon.