ContextMenuStrip Requires Two Right Clicks to Display - vb.net

Question

I like to create my contextmenu's programmatically. I generally do not add the items to the contextmenustrip until it is opening as the items that get displayed are dependent on other aspects of the design that are variable.
I have found that the contextmenustrips seem to require two right clicks to display. I've tried adding the menu items in different events (opening, opened, etc) and also manually setting the contextmenustrip's visibility to true to no avail.
I can't for the life of me figure out why two right clicks are necessary. If you create a blank winforms project and then replace all the code with this, it'll demonstrate the issue.
Public Class Form1
Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
Dim currContextMenuStrip As New ContextMenuStrip
Me.ContextMenuStrip = currContextMenuStrip
AddHandler currContextMenuStrip.Opening, AddressOf ContextMenuStrip1_Opening
End Sub
Private Sub ContextMenuStrip1_Opening(sender As Object, e As CancelEventArgs)
Dim currContextMenuStrip As ContextMenuStrip = sender
Dim menuTxt As String = "&Find"
'only add the menu if it doesn't already exist
If (From f In currContextMenuStrip.Items Where f.text = menuTxt).Count = 0 Then
Dim newMenuItem As New ToolStripMenuItem
newMenuItem.Text = menuTxt
currContextMenuStrip.Items.Add(newMenuItem)
End If
End Sub
End Class
EDIT: Just figured out it seems to be connected to the fact that the contextmenustrip doesn't have any items on the first right click. If I add a dummy item, then hide it once other items are added, it works on the first right click. So confused!
This works:
Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
Dim currContextMenuStrip As New ContextMenuStrip
Me.ContextMenuStrip = currContextMenuStrip
AddHandler currContextMenuStrip.Opening, AddressOf ContextMenuStrip1_Opening
'add a dummy item
Dim newMenuItem As New ToolStripMenuItem
newMenuItem.Text = "dummy"
currContextMenuStrip.Items.Add(newMenuItem)
End Sub
Private Sub ContextMenuStrip1_Opening(sender As Object, e As CancelEventArgs)
Dim currContextMenuStrip As ContextMenuStrip = sender
Dim menuTxt As String = "&Find"
'only add the menu if it doesn't already exist
If (From f In currContextMenuStrip.Items Where f.text = menuTxt).Count = 0 Then
Dim newMenuItem As New ToolStripMenuItem
newMenuItem.Text = menuTxt
currContextMenuStrip.Items.Add(newMenuItem)
End If
'hide the dummy item
Dim items As List(Of ToolStripMenuItem) = (From f As ToolStripMenuItem In currContextMenuStrip.Items Where f.Text = "dummy").ToList
items.First.visible = False
End Sub
End Class

Answer 1

If you really need to do things this way, one option is to create your own custom ContextMenuStrip that accounts for the behaviour when there are no items and the requirement for a dummy item. I used this code:
Imports System.ComponentModel
Public Class Form1
Private WithEvents menu As New ContextMenuStrip
Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
ContextMenuStrip = menu
End Sub
Private Sub menu_Opening(sender As Object, e As CancelEventArgs) Handles menu.Opening
If menu.Items.Count = 0 Then
menu.Items.AddRange({New ToolStripMenuItem("First"),
New ToolStripMenuItem("Second"),
New ToolStripMenuItem("Third")})
End If
End Sub
Private Sub menu_ItemClicked(sender As Object, e As ToolStripItemClickedEventArgs) Handles menu.ItemClicked
MessageBox.Show(e.ClickedItem.Text)
End Sub
End Class
and saw the same behaviour you describe. I then defined this class:
Public Class ContextMenuStripEx
Inherits ContextMenuStrip
Private dummyItem As ToolStripItem
Public ReadOnly Property IsInitialised As Boolean
Get
Return dummyItem Is Nothing
End Get
End Property
Public Sub New()
dummyItem = Items.Add(CStr(Nothing))
End Sub
''' <inheritdoc />
Protected Overrides Sub OnItemAdded(e As ToolStripItemEventArgs)
If Not IsInitialised Then
Items.Remove(dummyItem)
dummyItem = Nothing
End If
MyBase.OnItemAdded(e)
End Sub
End Class
and changed my form code to this:
Imports System.ComponentModel
Public Class Form1
Private WithEvents menu As New ContextMenuStripEx
Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
ContextMenuStrip = menu
End Sub
Private Sub menu_Opening(sender As Object, e As CancelEventArgs) Handles menu.Opening
If Not menu.IsInitialised Then
menu.Items.AddRange({New ToolStripMenuItem("First"),
New ToolStripMenuItem("Second"),
New ToolStripMenuItem("Third")})
End If
End Sub
Private Sub menu_ItemClicked(sender As Object, e As ToolStripItemClickedEventArgs) Handles menu.ItemClicked
MessageBox.Show(e.ClickedItem.Text)
End Sub
End Class
and it worked as desired. Note that the last code snippet uses the custom type and its custom property.

Answer 2

Thanks for all the help and suggestions! I ultimately decided to build the superset of menus in the Designer and then just show/hide at run time. That's probably faster on each right click then rebuilding the menu each time.

Answer 3

Microsoft has old style and new style context menus. The Popup event was used for the old style context menus and it received a plain EventArgs object. The new context menus use the Opening event which receives a CancelEventArgs object. If currContextMenuStrip.Items doesn't contain any items, e.Cancel will be set to True when the event handler is called (which caused the problem you encountered). The fix is to add the menu items and then set e.Cancel to False. It should display fine after that. To make sure items were actually added, the assignment of e.Cancel can be guarded with an if statement as follows:
If currContextMenuStrip.Items.Count <> 0 Then
e.Cancel = False
End If