Drop-down List - Terminology

Terminology

This type of control is called a "Pop-up menu" on the Macintosh platform, however the term "popup menu" is used to refer to context menus in other GUI systems. The Macintosh also has the notion of "pop-down menus". The distinction is that, when the menu is closed, a pop-up menu's title shows the last-selected item while a pop-down menu shows a static title like a menu in the menu bar. Thus, the uses are different — popup menus are used to select a single option from a list while pop-down menus are used to issue commands or in cases where multiple options can be selected.

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