How to add an icon to System.Windows.Forms.MenuItem?

Question

I tried to add an icon to one of my context menu items, but I couldn't do it. Can anybody help me?

Here's the code I've written:

 private System.Windows.Forms.ContextMenu notifyContextMenu;
 private void foo() {
            if (notifyIcon == null) {
                notifyIcon = new System.Windows.Forms.NotifyIcon();   
            }

           if (notifyContextMenu == null) {
               notifyContextMenu = new System.Windows.Forms.ContextMenu();
               notifyContextMenu.MenuItems.Add("Exit");
               // How do I add an icon to this context menu item?
             }
            notifyIcon.ContextMenu =  notifyContextMenu;
          }
     }

Answer 1

Lex Li's answer covers the simplest way to do this: switch from the MainMenu control to the MenuStrip control, which provides built-in, out-of-the-box support for adding icons to each menu item. Unfortunately, as I discussed in a comment to his answer, this solution has some ugly consequences.

In particular, if you use the MenuStrip control, your menus will forever look ugly and out of place on newer versions of Windows because they're custom drawn by .NET code that will probably never be updated. Sure, they look slick on Windows XP, but that's been old news for at least 5 years. Menus look totally different starting with Windows Vista, and that's what your user will expect from your app, too. The coolest icons in the world just won't help you look any more modern. Compare:

               

So the somewhat more involved solution is to stick with the MainMenu control, which actually uses menus drawn by Windows itself, but write some code that handles adding an icon.

And fortunately, Wyatt O'Day has already written a great custom control that does this for you. All you have to do is download it, drop it into your project, compile, and start using it. It's open-source, licensed under the BSD license, and it produces menus that look platform native on all versions of Windows. Download it here from his website, or start with his introduction and 100% accurate rant.

The results are awesome: