To create a menu bar and menus in a dialog window, an application first must load the dialog window to get a handle to the dialog-frame window. The dialog-frame window can be associated with a menu resource by calling the WinLoadMenu function. This function requires arguments that specify the menu identifier and the handle of the parent window for the menu. Finally, the dialog-frame window must incorporate the menu by sending a WM_UPDATEFRAME message to the dialog window. The following code fragment illustrates these operations:

    HWND hwndDialog, hwndMenu;

    /* Get the dialog resource. */
    hwndDialog = WinLoadDlg(...);

    / Get the menu resource and attach it to the dialog window. */
    hwndMenu = WinLoadMenu(hwndDialog, ...);

    /* Inform the dialog window that it has a new menu.         */
    WinSendMsg(hwndDialog, WM_UPDATEFRAME, (MPARAM) NULL, (MPARAM) NULL);

Applications can create menus in both modal and modeless dialog windows. The preceding code fragment can be used for either type of dialog window. For a modal dialog window, your application must call the WinProcessDlg function to handle user input until the dialog window is dismissed. For a modeless dialog window, your application must call the WinShowWindow function to display the dialog window, enabling the message loop to direct messages to the dialog window.