menuitem - Archive of obsolete content

« XUL Reference home [ Examples | Attributes | Properties | Methods | Related ]

A single choice in a menupopup element. It acts much like a button but it is rendered on a menu.

More information is available in the XUL tutorial.

Attributes: acceltext, accesskey, allowevents, autocheck, checked, closemenu, command, crop, description, disabled, image, key, label, name, selected, tabindex, type, validate, value

Properties: accessibleType, accessKey, command, control, crop, disabled, image, label, labelElement, parentContainer, selected, tabIndex, value

Style classes: menuitem-iconic, menuitem-non-iconic

Examples

<menulist>
  <menupopup>
    <menuitem label="option 1" value="1"/>
    <menuitem label="option 2" value="2"/>
    <menuitem label="option 3" value="3"/>
    <menuitem label="option 4" value="4"/>
  </menupopup>
</menulist>

Attributes

acceltext: Type: string; Text that appears beside the menu label to indicate the shortcut key (accelerator key) to use to invoke the command. If this value is set, it overrides an assigned key set in the key attribute. This attribute does not apply to menus directly on the menubar.

accesskey: Type: character; This should be set to a character that is used as a shortcut key. This should be one of the characters that appears in the label attribute for the element.

allowevents: Type: boolean; If true, events are passed to children of the element. Otherwise, events are passed to the element only.

autocheck: Type: boolean; If this attribute is true or left out, the checked state of the button will be switched each time the button is pressed. If this attribute is false, the checked state must be adjusted manually. When autocheck is true, the button type should be "checkbox" or "radio".

checked: Type: boolean; Indicates whether the element is checked or not.; Use hasAttribute() to determine whether this attribute is set instead of getAttribute().; For buttons, the type attribute must be set to checkbox or radio for this attribute to have any effect.

Note: if the checked attribute is set to true, and you persist its value via the persist attribute, Mozilla will fail to persist its value when the menuitem is unchecked because of bug 15232. A workaround is to set the autocheck attribute to false, then programmatically set the checked attribute when the user selects the item, and set it to false instead of removing the attribute (i.e. do menuitem.setAttribute("checked", "false") instead of menuitem.removeAttribute("checked")) when the user unchecks the menuitem, as a value of false will both correctly hide the checkmark and persist its hidden state.

command: Type: id; Set to the id of a command element that is being observed by the element.

closemenu

Type: one of the values below

Indicates if the menu closes when the menuitem is activated.

auto: This, the default value if the closemenu attribute is not specified, closes up the menu and all parent menus.
single: The menu the item is contained within is closed, but the parent menus remain open.
none: No menus are closed.

crop

Type: one of the values below

If the label of the element is too big to fit in its given space, the text will be cropped on the side specified by the crop attribute. An ellipsis will be used in place of the cropped text. If the box direction is reversed, the cropping is reversed.

start: The text will be cropped on its left side in left-to-right text locales, and the right side in right-to-left locales.
end: The text will be cropped on its right side in left-to-right text locales, and the right side in right-to-left locales.
left: The text will be cropped on its left side.
right: The text will be cropped on its right side.
center: The text will be cropped in the middle, showing both the start and end of the text normally.
none: The text will be not be cropped using an ellipsis. However, the text will simply be cut off if it is too large. The side depends on the CSS text alignment.

Depending on the platform and theme being used, some elements will have set a maximum width so they will always appear cropped. If you wish to use the value none and the displayed text is larger than this maximum width, you may be able to use the max-width CSS property (or the maxwidth attribute) to override this size. For example, for a menuitem in a menu you can add the following CSS rule when you want to use the value none:

menupopup > menuitem, menupopup > menu { max-width: none; }

description: Type: string; Descriptive text to appear in addition to the dialog title.

disabled: Type: boolean; Indicates whether the element is disabled or not. If this attribute is set, the element is disabled. Disabled elements are usually drawn with grayed-out text. If the element is disabled, it does not respond to user actions, it cannot be focused, and the command event will not fire. In the case of form elements, it will not be submitted. Do not set the attribute to true, as this will suggest you can set it to false to enable the element again, which is not the case.
The disabled attribute is allowed only for form controls. Using it with an anchor tag (an <a> link) will have no effect.

The element will, however, still respond to mouse events. To enable the element, leave this attribute out entirely.; Visible controls have a disabled property which, except for menus and menuitems, is normally preferred to use of the attribute, as it may need to update additional state.

image: Type: URI; The URI of the image to appear on the element. If this attribute is empty or left out, no image appears. The position of the image is determined by the dir and orient attributes.

Note: The menuitem must have a class of menuitem-iconic for the image to appear.

key: Type: id; Set to the id of a key element whose key shortcut is displayed in the menuitem.

label: Type: string; The label that will appear on the element. If this is left out, no text appears. For an editable menuitem element the value of this attribute is copied to the menulist.value property upon user selection of the menuitem.

name: Type: string name; Radio menuitems with the same name as put into a group. Only one menuitem in each radio group can be checked at a time.

selected: Type: boolean; Indicates whether the element is selected or not. This value is read-only. To change the selection, set either the selectedIndex or selectedItem property of the containing element.

tabindex: Type: integer; The tab order of the element. The tab order is the order in which the focus is moved when the user presses the "tab" key. Elements with a higher tabindex are later in the tab sequence.

type

Type: one of the values below

Can be used to create checkable menuitems or for radio button menuitems.

checkbox: The menuitem is checked. The checked attribute determines whether the menuitem is checked or not.
radio: The menuitem becomes part of a radio group. Other menuitems that have the same value for their name attributes are part of the same radio group. Only one menuitem in the same radio group can be checked at once.

More information on adding checkmarks to menus in the XUL tutorial

validate

Type: one of the values below

This attribute indicates whether to load the image from the cache or not. This would be useful if the images are stored remotely or you plan on swapping the image frequently. The following values are accepted, or leave out the attribute entirely for default handling:

always: The image is always checked to see whether it should be reloaded.
never: The image will be loaded from the cache if possible.

value: Type: string; The string attribute allows you to associate a data value with an element. It is not used for any specific purpose, but you can access it with a script for your own use. Be aware, however, that some elements, such as textbox will display the value visually, so in order to merely associate data with an element, you could 1) Use another attribute like "value2" or "data-myAtt" (as in the HTML5 draft), as XUL does not require validation (less future-proof); 2) Use setAttributeNS() to put custom attributes in a non-XUL namespace (serializable and future-proof); 3) Use setUserData() (future-proof and clean, but not easily serializable). For user editable menulist elements, the contents, as visible to the user, are read and set using the Menulist.value syntax. For those elements, setAttribute("value", myValue) and getAttribute("value") do not access or affect the contents displayed to the user.

Properties

accessibleType: Type: integer; A value indicating the type of accessibility object for the element.

accessKey: Type: character; Gets and sets the value of the accesskey attribute.

command: Type: element id; Gets and sets the value of the command attribute.

control: Type: menu element; Returns the enclosing menu that the item is inside, if any, or null if there is no enclosing menu.

crop: Type: string; Gets and sets the value of the crop attribute.

disabled: Type: boolean; Gets and sets the value of the disabled attribute.

image: Type: image URL; Gets and sets the value of the image attribute.

label: Type: string; Gets and sets the value of the label attribute.

labelElement: Type: label element; The label element associated with the control. This is set when a label has a control attribute pointing to this element. This property will be null when no label is associated with the control.

parentContainer: Type: menu element; Read only property that returns the containing menu element, or null if there isn't a containing menu.

selected: Type: boolean; This property's value is true if this element is selected, or false if it is not. This property is read only. This property is available for menuitem and menuseparator elements in Firefox 3.

tabIndex: Type: integer; Gets and sets the value of the tabindex attribute.

value: Type: string; Gets and sets the value of the value attribute. For textbox and user editable menulist elements, the contents, as visible to the user, are read and set using the Textbox.value and Menulist.value syntax.

Inherited Properties
align, , allowEvents, , boxObject, builder, , , , className, , , , , collapsed, contextMenu, controllers, database, datasources, dir, , , flex, height, hidden, id, , , left, , maxHeight, maxWidth, menu, minHeight, minWidth, , , , , , , observes, ordinal, orient, , pack, , persist, , , , ref, resource, , , , , statusText, style, ,, tooltip, tooltipText, top, width

Methods

Inherited Methods
addEventListener(), appendChild(), blur, click, cloneNode(), compareDocumentPosition, dispatchEvent(), doCommand, focus, getAttribute(), getAttributeNode(), getAttributeNodeNS(), getAttributeNS(), getBoundingClientRect(), getClientRects(), getElementsByAttribute, getElementsByAttributeNS, getElementsByClassName(), getElementsByTagName(), getElementsByTagNameNS(), getFeature, getUserData, hasAttribute(), hasAttributeNS(), hasAttributes(), hasChildNodes(), insertBefore(), isDefaultNamespace(), isEqualNode, isSameNode, isSupported(), lookupNamespaceURI, lookupPrefix, normalize(), querySelector(), querySelectorAll(), removeAttribute(), removeAttributeNode(), removeAttributeNS(), removeChild(), removeEventListener(), replaceChild(), setAttribute(), setAttributeNode(), setAttributeNodeNS(), setAttributeNS(), setUserData

Style classes

menuitem-iconic: Use this class to have an image appear on the menuitem. Specify the image using the image attribute.

menuitem-non-iconic: Normally, menuitems have a margin to the left for an image or checkmark. This class may be used to remove this margin so that the menuitem appears on the left edge of the menupopup.

Elements: menu, menubar, menulist, menupopup, menuseparator

Interfaces: nsIAccessibleProvider, nsIDOMXULContainerItemElement, nsIDOMXULSelectControlItemElement