An action bar is described by an action bar template. This template defines the initial appearance of an action bar in a region. It contains a description of the buttons and pull-downs in the action bar. A single action bar template can be used to create action bars in many different regions.

 

Once a region's action bar has been created from a template, its appearance can be changed at runtime by adding, deleting, and manipulating its items. These changes affect only the region's action bar, not the template that was used to create it. Action bar templates cannot be modified after their creation.

 

The following code defines an empty action bar.

 

action bar MainMenu is 

end action bar

 

This action bar can be included in a region's frame attributes by specifying

 

action bar MainMenu

 

when defining the region. Only those regions that are children of the desktop can have action bars.

 

The following subsections describe how to specify pull-downs and buttons in an action bar template.