An implementation of a menu -- a popup window containing JMenuItems that is displayed when the user selects an item on the JMenuBar. In addition to JMenuItems, a JMenu can also contain JSeparators.

In essence, a menu is a button with an associated JPopupMenu. When the "button" is pressed, the JPopupMenu appears. If the "button" is on the JMenuBar, the menu is a top-level window. If the "button" is another menu item, then the JPopupMenu is "pull-right" menu.

Menus can be configured, and to some degree controlled, by Actions. Using an Action with a menu has many benefits beyond directly configuring a menu. Refer to Swing Components Supporting Action for more details, and you can find more information in How to Use Actions, a section in The Java Tutorial.

For information and examples of using menus see How to Use Menus, a section in The Java Tutorial.

Warning: Swing is not thread safe. For more information see Swing's Threading Policy.

Warning: Serialized objects of this class will not be compatible with future Swing releases. The current serialization support is appropriate for short term storage or RMI between applications running the same version of Swing. As of 1.4, support for long term storage of all JavaBeans™ has been added to the java.beans package. Please see java.beans.XMLEncoder.

extends JMenuItem implements Accessible, MenuElement

See also:
JMenuItem, JSeparator, JMenuBar, JPopupMenu

@beaninfo attribute: isContainer true description: A popup window containing menu items displayed in a menu bar.