Flex does not include a MenuBar component that can handle vertical menus, but feel free to make one yourself and post it .

After I read that it felt like a challenge, so here’s the solution: a Vertical MenuBar component. It extends MenuBar and works the same way, except the Menu items are stacked vertically and the menus open up either to the left or to the right of the menu bar. I’ve included the full source, it uses two classes, one that’s an extension of mx.controls.MenuBar, and another one that’s an extension of mx.controls.menuClasses.MenuItemRenderer. You can specify whether you want the menu to open to the left or the right by using the new direction property of the new component.

I tried to document the code really well, so it should be fairly straightforward if you take a look. I managed to get around needing access to all the private methods of MenuBar by repositioning the menus after they are placed on the stage and are shown. The instant they’re shown they’re moved to the right position. The one caveat is that this breaks the openDuration style of the Menu. If openDuration is set to use a Tween to animate the Menu opening, then I was stuck with showing the Menu during the Tween in the original position, then it would jump to the new correct position after the Tween finished. So you would see the Menu jump around after it opened, which was no good. So now openDuration cannot be used with the Vertical MenuBar, but I figure that’s not a big deal.

View the source.

Here’s the example showing both the normal MenuBar component on the top, and then two versions of the Vertical MenuBar, one that opens to the right and one that opens to the left.