Colour Pop-up Menu Component

   
Release: 1.2
Date: 17 August 2008
Delphi Compatibility:
Key
 D1   D2   D3   D4   D5   D6   D7  D2005
(Win32)		 D2006
(Win32)		 D2007 D2009
(Win32)		 D2010
(Win32)
Red LED Red LED Red LED Green LED Grey LED Green LED Green LED Grey LED Grey LED Grey LED Grey LED Grey LED

Overview

The colour menu component, TPJColourPopupMenu, is an open source non-visual component that descends from TPopupMenu. It implements a pop-up menu that gives access to the 16 basic Windows colours. The menu can be displayed over one, two, four or eight columns. It can also be displayed in one of the four following styles:

  • Text only – the menu displays a just a textual description of the colour.
  • Text and colour – the menu displays text describing the colour along with a small bitmap illustrating the colour.
  • Colour only – colour swatches are displayed without any text (like a palette).
  • Owner draw – the user provides code that draws the menu items.

The textual descriptions of colours are in English. However, it is easy to provide names in other languages or use Delphi colour identifiers etc. This is done by handling one of the component's events. The accompanying demo program shows how to do this.

Here are three examples of how the menu can appear:

Text only
(2 columns) 		Colour only
(4 columns) 		Text and Colour
(2 columns)
Screenshot of TPJColourPopupMenu text only example Screenshot of TPJColourPopupMenu colour only example Screenshot of TPJColourPopupMenu text and colour example

Included with the component in the download are:

  • A help file that can integrate with the Delphi 4-7 IDE.
  • Two property editors required by the component – one to prevent editing of the Items property and the other to limit the SelectedColour property to 16 basic colours.
  • A component editor (accessed from a mouse menu when the component is selected) that gives easy access to all the component's main properties. Here is a screenshot of the component editor:
    Screenshot of colour menu component editor
  • A demo project showing how to use the component.