How to use the WTL multipane status bar control

• Download Status Bar project - 8 Kb
• Download Status Bar executable - 10 Kb

Introduction

This article explains how to use WTL's CMultiPaneStatusBarCtrl class in an application. The sample project included with this article is a wizard-generated SDI application enhanced with a three pane status bar that displays status messages and the current date and time.

Status Bar

All of the relevant code for using the status bar is contained in the mainframe.h file of the sample project. The status bar is initialized in the OnCreate method, which also calls a workaround for a bug in the WTL class. Another method provides a timer handler and is used to display date and time in status bar panes.

Basics

A status bar provides users with various types of feedback and information as they use an application. WTL wizard-generated applications define a single pane status bar. It handles the basic functions of showing "Ready" and is switched to simple mode to display menu tips. Multipane status bars, on the other hand, are divided into multiple, independently controlled segments.

Initialization

Please note that you must include the atlctrlx.h header file. It defines the CMultiPaneStatusBarCtrl class. You must also include atlmisc.h, as it defines AtlLoadIconImage() and the CString class.

The following steps are needed to define and initialize a multipane status bar control for an application:

1. Create a resource definition for each status bar pane
2. Define a member variable: CMultiPaneStatusBarCtrl m_status;
3. Subclass the "simple" status bar created by the WTL wizard
4. Enumerate and set the status bar panes
5. Call the workaround method, SetPaneWidths()
6. Set the icons (if desired) for the individual status bar panes

The following resource definitions from resource.h pertain to the status bar panes and their icons. They were created by the resource editor when the icons were imported and they are used to identify status bar panes as well as the icons. You must manually enter similar values if you do not import or create status bar icons for your application.

#define IDR_DEFAULT 201
#define IDR_DATE    202
#define IDR_TIME    203

In addition, WTL defines a default pane identifier, ID_DEFAULT_PANE, which it uses as a variable width pane for status messages such as "Ready".

Here is the OnCreate() method from mainframe.h. Note that the width of the default pane is set to 0 in the array passed to SetPaneWidths().

LRESULT OnCreate(UINT, WPARAM, LPARAM, BOOL&)
{ 
    CreateSimpleStatusBar();

    // subclass the status bar as multipane

    m_status.SubclassWindow(m_hWndStatusBar);

    // set status bar panes. ID_DEFAULT_PANE is defined by WTL

    int arrPanes[] = { ID_DEFAULT_PANE, IDR_DATE, IDR_TIME };

    m_status.SetPanes(arrPanes, 
        sizeof(arrPanes) / sizeof(int), false);

    // set status bar pane widths using local workaround

    int arrWidths[] = { 0, 90, 60 };
    SetPaneWidths(arrWidths, sizeof(arrWidths) / sizeof(int));

    // set the status bar pane icons

    m_status.SetPaneIcon(ID_DEFAULT_PANE, 
        AtlLoadIconImage(IDR_DEFAULT, LR_DEFAULTCOLOR));

    m_status.SetPaneIcon(IDR_DATE, 
        AtlLoadIconImage(IDR_DATE, LR_DEFAULTCOLOR));

    m_status.SetPaneIcon(IDR_TIME, 
        AtlLoadIconImage(IDR_TIME, LR_DEFAULTCOLOR));

    // initialize date/time and start a 1 second timer

    OnTimer(0, 0, 0, bHandled);
    SetTimer(1, 1000);

    return 0; 
}

Workaround

SetPaneWidths() is a workaround that solves a bug in the CMultiPaneStatusBarCtrl::SetPanes() method. The bug limits the width of all panes after the default pane to a combined total of 100 pixels. This workaround allows arbitrary pane widths.

void SetPaneWidths(int* arrWidths, int nPanes)
{ 
    // find the size of the borders

    int arrBorders[3];
    m_status.GetBorders(arrBorders);

    // calculate right edge of default pane (0)

    arrWidths[0] += arrBorders[2];
    for (int i = 1; i < nPanes; i++)
        arrWidths[0] += arrWidths[i];

    // calculate right edge of remaining panes (1 thru nPanes-1)

    for (int j = 1; j < nPanes; j++)
        arrWidths[j] += arrBorders[2] + arrWidths[j - 1];

    // set the pane widths

    m_status.SetParts(m_status.m_nPanes, arrWidths); 
}

Timer Handler

Here is the code for the timer handler. You must also create a message map entry for the WM_TIMER message.

LRESULT OnTimer(UINT, WPARAM, LPARAM, BOOL&)
{ 
    // get the current date and time

    SYSTEMTIME st;
    ::GetLocalTime(&st);

    CString str;

    // Pane 1: Display the date

    str.Format("%i/%i/%i", st.wMonth, st.wDay, st.wYear);
    m_status.SetPaneText(IDR_DATE, str);

    // Pane 2: Display the time

    str.Format("%i:%02i", st.wHour, st.wMinute);
    m_status.SetPaneText(IDR_TIME, str);

    return 0; 
}

Terms Of Use

The sample application available with this article is free for any purpose.

THIS SOFTWARE IS DISTRIBUTED AS-IS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND.

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Instead of subclassing m_hWndStatusBar Matt Barry 15:44 31 May '04   Why not have CMultiPaneStatusBarCtrl create the status bar? You should be able to replace these two lines: CreateSimpleStatusBar(); m_status.SubclassWindow(m_hWndStatusBar); With this one: m_hWndStatusBar = m_status.Create(m_hWnd); Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink 1.00/5 (1 vote) What if i use Dialog based application? tareqsiraj 5:20 15 Oct '03   First of all, thanks a LOT for the example. I am new to WTL and was wondering if I could use a status bar in my applicatin. I've noticed that the example uses CreateSimpleStatusBar() which is only available if i derive my main form from CFrameWindowImpl. But my application is based on Dialogs and derives from CAxDialogImpl (I'm using ActiveX). Here i cannot call CreateSimpleStatusBar() and dont have the member variable m_hWndStatusBar which gets initialized by CreateSimpleStatusBar(). How do i use CMultiPaneStatusBarCtrl here? Any pointers will be helpful. Thankx in advance. -Tareq Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink 2.00/5 (2 votes) How would you display date in local format Angus Comber 3:04 5 May '03   Hello Just something I am working on at the moment. How would you work out the local display format for the date and display according in your statusbar? Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink 1.00/5 (1 vote) Re: How would you display date in local format Steve S 7:28 2 Oct '03   Read the locale settings for the current user, and alter which of D,M,Y you format. I've done this previously by having StringToDate and DateToString functions as static members of a Location class, which loads all the useful stuff via the GetLocaleInfo API. The only tricky part is that nearly everything you read back is a string, so you have to use _ttoi or _tcstod a lot! After that, it's generally a switch/case block to handle the different settings for LOCALE_IDATE. Steve S Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink 1.00/5 (1 vote) Pane Sizes Ernesto Dallet 16:12 1 Apr '03   Great Article!, ill like to contribute to it with a trick i found to make the sizing of the panes easyer. instead of using the Icon IDs as pane IDs, use string table entries, add a string to your string table for each pane, with some "default" text to appear, or you can even have a "blank" string made of only spaces, the deal is that each pane will be automatically sized to acomodate for the text you enter on each string!, just remember to pass true when you call SetPanes() like this: SetPanes(arrPanes, sizeof(arrPanes)/sizeof(int), true); // set to TRUE and you can adjust the size of the pane by adding / removing spaces from the string. Cheers! Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink 3.67/5 (2 votes) Status display tferenc 6:04 26 Nov '02   I liked the article, I have been trying to figure out how to to it! Just one observation when the menu items are selected the staus bar changes, it seems that the CFrameWindowImplBase nMenuSelect handler does:- :SendMessage(m_hWndStatusBar, SB_SIMPLE, TRUE, 0L); :SendMessage(m_hWndStatusBar, SB_SETTEXT, (255 | SBT_NOBORDERS), (LPARAM)szBuff); overriding it and changing to ::SendMessage(m_hWndStatusBar, SB_SIMPLE, FALSE, 0L); ::SendMessage(m_hWndStatusBar, SB_SETTEXT, 0, (LPARAM)szBuff); "sovles" it. I would be interested to hear if there is a better method? Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink 5.00/5 (1 vote) Re: Status display Ed Gadziemski 5:27 27 Nov '02   As you noted, the default behavior in windows applications is to display a menutip (using text from the string table) when a menu item is selected or hovered over. If you don't want that behavior, overriding as you suggest is a good method. Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink

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