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Note: This is a work in progress and many formatting issues have been fixed. Read more about the project on the home page.

disable

disable menu
disable menuItem of menu
disable button

The disable command dims menu items, entire menus, and buttons. It’s a shortcut for setting the enabled property of a menu item, menu, or button to false.

Users cannot choose dimmed menu items.

Disabled buttons don't receive mouseDown, mouseStillDown, mouseUp, or mouseDoubleClick messages when you click them.

Examples

disable menu "File"
disable menu 2
disable second menu
disable menuItem "New" of menu "File"
disable menuItem 2 of menu 2
disable second menuItem of second menu
disable button 1
disable background button id 1234

Demo Script

on disableTalkMenu
if there is a menu "Reference" then
disable menuItem "HyperTalk Reference" of menu "Reference"
end if
end disableTalkMenu

Related Topics

Placeholders

menu

An expression that evaluates to one of the following:

menu text
menu posInteger
ordinal menu

For example:

menu "File"
menu 2
second menu

menuItem

An expression that evaluates to one of the following:

menuItem text
menuItem posInteger
ordinal menuItem

For example:

menuItem "New"
menuItem 2
second menuItem

button

HyperTalk Definition

An expression that identifies a button by name, number, or id, using one of the following forms:

[card] button id posInteger [of card]
[card] button text [of card] -- name
[card] button posInteger [of card]
ordinal [card] button [of card]
bkgnd button id posInteger [of card]
bkgnd button text [of card] -- name
bkgnd button posInteger [of card]
ordinal bkgnd button [of card]

For example:

card button id 3894
card button "Return"
card button 1
first card button
bkgnd button 2 of card 2
last bkgnd button

When used inside a button script: me

When a button receives a message: [the] target

A button can also be referred to as a part when you’re talking about its position among all buttons and fields within the same card or background.

AppleScript Definition

An expression that identifies a button by name, number, or id, using the same forms as HyperTalk except that “background” must be used in place of “bkgnd”.

HyperTalk Reference

Version 0.8b4 (July 4, 2025)

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