With the XStatusBar-class it is very easy to display text, numbers, bitmaps or progressbars in a statusbar. It also provides temporary display of text in any pane with automatic restore of the normal appearance. For example, it is possible to display a scrolling bitmap in a pane but during a long operation, a progressbar indicates how long it takes. The class also provides actions when you click in any pane (also in dialogbased applications).

In this example, the first pane temporarily changes to a progressbar. When the long operation ends, it automaticly changes back to a normal textpane.

What have you to do, to use this class?

The use the XStatusBar-class is quite simple. First you have change the existing CStatusBar-member m_wndStatusBar to XStatusBar in your mainframe-headerfile.

XStatusBar m_wndStatusBar;

Second, replace the creation-functions in the OnCreate()-method of CMainFrame by:

	if(!m_wndStatusBar.CreateStatusBar(this, indicators, sizeof(indicators)/sizeof(UINT)))
		{
		TRACE0("Failed to create status bar\n");
		return -1;
		}

Third, define the appearance of the panes. For example

	m_wndStatusBar.SetMode(1, XSB_TEXT | DT_CENTER | DT_VCENTER);
	m_wndStatusBar.SetMode(2, XSB_NUMBER | DT_CENTER);
	m_wndStatusBar.SetMode(3, XSB_BITMAP| XSB_REPEAT);

For each pane, you can combine the following modes:

You can change the mode for every Pane whenever you want.

Fourth, after the mode-definition, you have to tell the panes about further information:

	m_wndStatusBar.SetFgColor(1, RGB( 0, 0, 0), RGB(255, 255, 255));
	m_wndStatusBar.SetBkColor(1, RGB( 0, 255, 255), RGB(128, 0, 0));
	m_wndStatusBar.SetNumber(2, 0, 0);
	m_wndStatusBar.SetBitmap(3, "BM1", "BM2");

There are a couple of functions to change the appearance of the panes:

If you only need textpanes, like the standard-statusbar you don't need to do step 3 and 4. Now you are ready to use the class.

What have you to do, to temporarily display a progress bar?

First you have to save the pane's appearance with SavePane(ix). Then you can change the mode of the pane to XSB_PROGRESS and set the progress bars parameters (e.g. SetRange(ix, 0, 100), SetStep(ix, 2), ...). Now it's time to do your long operation and step your progressbar (StepIt(ix)). At last, restore the pane's appearance (RestorePane(ix)).

	m_wndStatusBar.SavePane(0);
	m_wndStatusBar.SetMode(0, XSB_PROGRESS);
	m_wndStatusBar.SetRange(0, 0, 100);
	...
	(long operation)
	...
	m_wndStatusBar.RestorePane(0);

What have you to do, to temporarily display a text?

There is another class called XPaneText, to simplify this action. When you want to show temporar text in a pane (no matter if the pane is enabled or disabled) just create a XPaneText-object with the specified text. When you destroy the object, the original appearance of the pane was restored. For example, the following code displays the text "Display this text" in the first pane until you end the dialog. There's no matter if the pane was in bitmap-mode or if it was disabled.

{
	XPaneText("Display this text");
	CTestDialog dlg;
	dlg.DoModal();
} // Destroy the XPaneText-object ==> Restore pane

How does the application know, which pane was clicked?

First you have to add a normal handler for the mouse-event (for example ON_WM_LBUTTONDBLCLK()). In the eventhandler, use the function GetPaneAtPosition(point) to determine, wich pane belongs to the mouse-position. This function also works fine in dialogs, because in this case, the point was translatet into client-corrdinates.

void CMainFrame::OnLButtonDblClk(UINT nFlags, CPoint point)
{
	if (m_wndStatusBar.GetPaneAtPosition(point) == 3)
		AfxMessageBox("Pane 3 doubleclicked");
	else
		...
}