Menus and toolbars

InstallMate Builder contains dozens of menus and toolbars with commands that enable you to perform actions on your installation project and its contents. You will find menus and toolbars in the following places:

The remainder of this topic discusses these menus and toolbars and the ways to access them. For a full list of all commands in InstallMate, see Command reference. For a list of keyboard accelerators, see Keyboard shortcuts.

Tip: To get an explanation of a command, open the menu on which it appears and press the F1 key.

Main menu bar

The main menu bar is the most obvious one: it runs across the top of the InstallMate Builder main window, just under the title bar. It contains project-wide commands such as the File commands, the Project commands, and the Help commands.

Main menu bar

To access the commands on this menu, you can use the following methods.

See the following topics for a list of the main menu commands: File Edit View Navigate Format Project Help

Context (popup) menus

Each project item in your InstallMate project has its own private menu. (These menus are usually called popup menus because they pop up over the item in question, or context menus because their commands apply only in the context of that particular item.)

To access an item's context menu, use one of the following methods:

You can also open the item's context menu by clicking on the context menu button Context menu in the title bar of the item's attribute pane:

Pane title bar

See Project item commands for a full list of context menu commands.

Specials menus

Specials menus contain commands to insert symbolic variables or other special text strings into a text field. It appears when you click the Specials button button to the right of a text field:

Localized edit control

Each menu contains commands for the special text strings that are most relevant for the associated text field. When you select one of the special menu items, the corresponding text string is inserted into the text field at the caret position. If any portion of the text field was selected before you opened the menu, the entire selection is replaced by the new text.

See Specials menu commands for a full list of the specials menus commands.

Main toolbar

The main toolbar runs underneath the main menu bar near the top of the InstallMate main window:

Main toolbar

It contains buttons for the most common commands from the main menu. It also contains a drop-down list that selects the current display language for localized text and other resources in your project, and a drop-down list that selects the default build package. (The default build package is the one that is built if you press the F7 key.)

Tip: To discover which command a toolbar button represents, point the mouse cursor to it (without clicking) and hold it there. After approximately 0.5 seconds, a small tooltip appears that shows the command name, plus any keyboard shortcut associated with the command.