Specifying menu keyboard equivalents

Adobe AIR 1.0 and later

You can specify a key equivalent (sometimes called an accelerator) for a window or application menu command. When the key or key combination is pressed the NativeMenuItem dispatches a select event and any onSelect event handler specified in the data source is called. The behavior is the same as though the user had selected the menu item.

For complete details about menu keyboard equivalents, see Key equivalents for native menu commands (AIR) .

Using the MenuBuilder framework, you can specify a keyboard equivalent for a menu item in its corresponding node in the data source. If the data source has a keyEquivalent field, the MenuBuilder framework uses that value as the key equivalent character.

You can also specify modifier keys that are part of the key equivalent combination. To add a modifier, specify true for the altKey , ctrlKey , cmdKey , or shiftKey field. The specified key or keys become part of the key equivalent combination. By default the Control key is specified for Windows and the Command key is specified for Mac OS X. To override this default behavior, include a defaultKeyEquivalentModifiers field set to false .

The following example shows the data structure for an XML-based menu data source that includes keyboard equivalents, in a file named “keyEquivalentMenu.xml”:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 
<root> 
    <menuitem label="File"> 
        <menuitem label="New" keyEquivalent="n"/> 
        <menuitem label="Open" keyEquivalent="o"/> 
        <menuitem label="Save" keyEquivalent="s"/> 
        <menuitem label="Save As..." keyEquivalent="s" shiftKey="true"/> 
        <menuitem label="Close" keyEquivalent="w"/> 
    </menuitem> 
    <menuitem label="Edit"> 
        <menuitem label="Cut" keyEquivalent="x"/> 
        <menuitem label="Copy" keyEquivalent="c"/> 
        <menuitem label="Paste" keyEquivalent="v"/> 
    </menuitem> 
</root>

The following example application loads the menu structure from “keyEquivalentMenu.xml” and uses it as the structure for the window or application menu for the application:

<html> 
    <head> 
        <title>XML-based menu with key equivalents example</title> 
        <script type="text/javascript" src="AIRAliases.js"></script> 
        <script type="text/javascript" src="AIRMenuBuilder.js"></script> 
    </head> 
    <body> 
        <script type="text/javascript"> 
            // Create a NativeMenu from "keyEquivalentMenu.xml" and set it 
            // as the application/window menu 
            var keyEquivMenu = air.ui.Menu.createFromXML("keyEquivalentMenu.xml"); 
            air.ui.Menu.setAsMenu(keyEquivMenu); 
        </script> 
    </body> 
</html>