---
title: Toolbars and Menus
order: 60000
seealso: []
---

# Toolbars and Menus

The EMX Controls Library contains the `ToolbarManager` component that allows you to create traditional Toolbars & Menus or the [Ribbon UI](../ribbon/index.md) in your application. `ToolbarManager` offers rich capabilities to arrange and manage traditional toolbars, create context menus, adjust toolbar view and behavior settings, and customize bars at runtime.

![toolbars](/docs/images/toolbars.png)

You can use multiple bar item types to create the menu UI: regular buttons, check buttons, editors, labels, sub-menus and group items.

The toolbars can be customized by users. At runtime they can choose to display the commands they need. 

The main features of the Toolbar&Menu library include:

- User customization:
    - Bar drag-and-drop — Allows a user to rearrange bars using drag handles.
    - Customization mode and Customization Window — In the Customization Window, a user can change the visibility of existing toolbars, and create custom toolbars. A user can hide, restore, and move toolbar items using drag-and-drop operations.
    - Quick customization — A user can move items within and between bars using drag-and-drop by holding the Alt key down. There is no need to activate customization mode/Customization Window to perform quick customization.

- Numerous bar layout options:
    - Horizontal and vertical directions of individual bars.
    - Any position within a window.
    - Bar stretching.
    - Bar adaptive layout — Toolbars automatically hide and restore their items when the space they accommodate is changed.
    - An option to show/hide bar drag handles.
    - An option to show/hide bar customization buttons.
    
- Supported bar items: `ToolbarButtonItem`, `ToolbarCheckItem`, `ToolbarMenuItem`, `ToolbarEditorItem`, `ToolbarTextItem`, `ToolbarItemGroup`, and `ToolbarCheckItemGroup`.

- Context menus — You can create context menus for external controls. The style settings of the context menus are consistent with all components of the the Toolbar&Menu library.

See the following topics for more information: 

- [Get Started With Toolbars](get-started-with-toolbars.md)
- [Toolbars](toolbars.md)
- [Popup and Context Menus](popup-and-context-menus.md)
- [Toolbar Items](toolbar-items.md)
- [Toolbar Serialization](toolbar-serialization-and-deserialization.md)