The Menu tab lets you customize the menu. When you open this tab, you can set certain aspects of menu appearance (animations and shadow). You may also click any menu and drag its items to rearrange them, or drag them off the menu to delete them, or right-click a menu item to change the text for it, etc. In addition, you can drag a menu away from its default attachment point altogether. Left-click the little gray bars at the left side of the menu, and holding down the mouse button, drag the menu away from its attachment point. The menu will change to a tool palette, and you can float it in whatever location you'd like.

Not only that, but if you desire you can attach it to any other side (or the bottom) of the program's window. Just drag it carefully to the new location and the menu's bounding box (the outline you see when dragging it) will "pop open" to a long bar shape. When this happens, you can let go and the menu will stick there. If you want to slide it to the left or right, or up and down, you can do this by carefully dragging it to the location you want and then letting up on the left mouse button.

A click with the right mouse button on any actual menu item when the Customize window is opened allows you to further customize the appearance of that item. In addition, if you right-click a menu item you can select Button Appearance to further alter the menu item's text and ALT+KEY properties.

To change the underline key from the Button appearance dialog, where it shows Button text on the bottom, enter an ampersand (&) to the left of the key you wish to use when pressed with ALT while the menu is open. For example, ALT+O when the file menu is open usually opens a file. If you want that to be ALT+E move the ampersand so it's to the left of the E.

Use the left-click-drag mouse functions to relocate a menu item to any location within the program's menu. (For example, you can drag File / Open to the top of the File menu if you desire. To do this, follow these instructions.

  1. Choose View / Customize so the Customize tabs appear. Select the Menu tab.

  2. Gently left-click any program menu to open it for editing. It's easy to pop it back shut, depending on how sensitive your mouse is, etc.

  3. Left-click and then hold the button down on any menu item. A box will appear around that item, which means the item is ready to relocate.

  4. Drag the item to the location you want it to occupy. You can even put any item on any other menu, for example if you wanted something from the Help menu to be on the File menu (beats us why) you could do this by dragging that item off of the help menu, then hold it over the File menu until the File menu opens.

  5. Then drag it up (or down) the File menu and release it when it's located at your preferred position.

  6. Just so you know, the mouse cursor will display that you've "grabbed" a menu item by putting a box around it, and then putting a little gray button under the mouse pointer, meaning that menu function is now ready for relocation.

  7. Relocate any other items as you may wish, then click back on the Customize tabs. if you're done customizing, click OK to close them and apply your changes.

To change an ALT+ key for a menu item, while the Menu tab is active follow these instructions:

  1. Left-click the menu that contains the item you want to change.

  2. Left-click to select that item (we'll say it's the Image menu item, Crop).

  3. Right-click that item and pick Button appearance. A new dialog will appear entitled Button Appearance.

  4. Within that dialog, you can change whether or not a graphic is displayed next to your menu item (pick Text only, or Image and text to see the graphic). The box to the left shows the description that will appear when that menu item is active, but you cannot edit that.

  5. At the bottom of the dialog is an edit box labeled: Button text. Within that box type in the text you'd like that menu item to use. Be sure to put the ampersand to the left of the character you'd like to use in combination with ALT+. In our example we'll change Crop, which is &Crop to C&rop. Now the keystroke ALT+R will jump the cursor to the Crop item. (The underlined character always represents the ALT+ key you can use to jump to that item and then activate it.)

  6. Click OK to complete your changes.

Use the controls on this tab to alter how the program's menus look, feel, and operate so they're at your express liking.

Show menus for - Default Menu is the choice when no documents are open.

Reset - reverses any changes you have made to the default application menus. This deletes any alterations in the main program menu that you may have made, and sets it back to how the program shipped.

Menu animations - if you like such things, you can have the menus open quickly, fade into place, slide into place, or unfold into place.

Menu shadows - checking this enables menu shadows, which add to the 3D appearance of the program.

Clicking the Close button will close the entire set of Customize tabs, establishing all of your changes on each as the settings the program will use.