>As for doing this "extremely non-standard" thing...well I'm trying to copy the menu styles of modern desktop applications (like OfficeXP?). I don't have it on my PC here at work, but, if my memory is correct, those menus have a white background with a light grey stripe running down the left side of the menu. They look flat, have a shadow and sometimes contain a picture/icon in the grey area. I hope that this qualifies as a "valid" reason :)

Okay, sorry, I see what you want to do. It's not changing colors, but rather adding icons to the left side of menus (pads, bars) like you say is in Office XP and other apps. This *is* standard, nothing at all wrong with that. I haven't actually used this yet, but I've looked at it in vfp8, and it's there. Well, I can help you on this a little.


Try doing a build of the Samples/Solution in vfp8, run it and go to Menus, where the last item is "personalized menus." That should help get you started, I hope.