If you look at most Windows applications, you'll notice that some items on the menu strip tend to appear repeatedly in the same place, and the contents of these items are often predictable. For example, the File menu is typically the first item on the menu strip, and on this menu, you typically find commands for creating a new document, opening an existing document, saving the document, printing the document, and exiting the application. The term document means the data that the application manipulates. In Microsoft Excel, it would be a spreadsheet; in the Bell Ringers application that you created in Chapter 20, it could be a new member.

The order in which these commands appear tends to be the same across applications; for example, the Exit command is invariably the last command on the File menu. There might be other application-specific commands on the File menu as well.

An application often has an Edit menu containing commands such as Cut, Paste, Clear, and Find. There are usually some additional application-specific menus on the menu strip, but again, convention dictates that the final menu is the Help menu, which contains access to help as well as “about” information, which contains copyright and licensing details for the application. In a well-designed application, most menus are predictable and help ensure the application becomes easy to learn and use.