How to put a close button in main window menu?

I'm looking to add a 'close' button to my main window's menu. An example can be found in the picture here: http://ifyoucodeittheywill.开发者_JS百科com/img/crimson-editor.png

(So, there's the normal close button in the window caption area, but, there's also a close button in the window's menu bar -- on the far right).

I'm using basic win32 API's, though an example using MFC would also be fine.

Does anyone know how to do this?

Thanks, Andrew

These buttons usually come with MDI windows. However I'm pretty sure the depicted application uses either its own, or more probably some advanced third party toolkit. Because, to be honest, what the Windows API and MFC (which is just a classed wrapper around the windows API) give you for GUI programming is unbareably limited.

If you want to design neat UIs steer clear from MFC and better have a look at something like Qt, wxWidgets or the like.

A really simple way of doing this is to use a regular menu item, using AppendMenu, but use the following flags:

• MF_BITMAP with a close button bitmap, or MF_OWNERDRAW or to draw it yourself
• MF_HELP (aka WM_RIGHTJUSTIFY), a not-very-well documented flag, which will justify the item to the right.

Here's one reference to MF_HELP that I found on msdn - it's actually about using the Win32 API to right-justify a menu item, but using Visual Basic.

MF_HELP (defined in winuser.h) is something of a holdover from Win16 days, back then, the convention was to right-justify the Help menu item, so it would stand apart. It was 'renamed' - an additional #define added with the same value - to WM_RIGHTJUSTIFY around Win95.

Note that bitmap menu items aren't accessible (eg. to users that are relying on a screenreader to read out where they are on the screen); if taking this approach, then at least add a regular 'Close' menu item elsewhere in the menus (eg. under File), so that a user doesn't have to rely on this item, and can also close it through usual means. Also be sure to implement the Ctrl-F4 shortcut, which is what most applications that support multiple documents or tabs use to close the current item.

By all means do not try to create this behaviour yourself. This is functionality that you get "for free" if you are using the MDI architecture of MFC. The close button "next to the menu" as you call it closes the active MDI child window. If you are not using the MDI architecture then there is no point in trying to add a close button there. Can you explain if you are using the MDI architecture?