Introduction to the status pane

The status pane is a system-wide user interface component that consists of a set of tiled windows, or subpanes. Some status pane subpanes are owned by the Eikon server, others by clients of the Eikon server.

Server-owned subpanes display system information, such as signal and battery strength. Client-owned subpanes display application-specific information, such as text messages and animations. Each application owns a status pane client that it can use to communicate with the server and so manipulate status pane layout and subpane contents. Applications can only access client-owned subpanes.

The default status pane is constructed and deleted by the CEikAppUi base class in the same way as other application user interface components, such as the menu bar and tool bar, are constructed and deleted. Similarly, an application can access the default status pane in the same way as it accesses other application user interface components, through a call to iEikonEnv.

Every Symbian device has a global status pane resource which defines all the status pane layouts that are supported on the device, all the sub-panes from which the layouts are constructed, and a default layout.

Application developers can use the STATUS_PANE_APP_MODEL resource to:

• Change which layout is displayed when the application is started

• Dynamically change which of the supported status pane layouts is displayed

• Access the contents of an application-owned subpane

• Change the contents of an application-owned subpane

Note that application's cannot define new layouts, or alter server-owned sub-panes.