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Statusbar – It’s Just So Easy to Use in MFC

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19 Feb 20022 min read 254.6K   38   34
How to add your own text to the status bar control using MFC

Introduction

I just had a look at the MSDN articles on CStatusBar, and to my surprise, I found it so easy to use.

First of all, a status bar contains several 'panes'. Each pane is a rectangular area of the status bar that you can use to display information. As you know, many applications display the status of the CAPS, NUM LOCK, and other keys in the rightmost panes. These panes, by default, have a 3-D border around them. The leftmost pane (pane 0), sometimes called the 'message pane', has the BPS_NOBORDERS style, and therefore doesn’t have any border surrounding it. This pane is usually used to display a string explaining the currently selected menu item or toolbar button. Furthermore, by default, the 'message pane' is 'elastic': it takes up the area of the status-bar not used by the other indicator panes, so that the other panes are always right-aligned.

To add a customized pane to display your own message on the status bar, it only takes the following 6 steps. For this example, we are going to display the current time at the rightmost location of the status bar. It will be updated every 60 seconds.

First of all, add a new entry to your string table with an ID of ID_INDICATOR_TIME and a caption of '%5s “. The extra spaces are to give you a little more room in the pane so the text will not be clipped.

Second, append ID_INDICATOR_TIME to the indicators[] array in the MainFrm.cpp file as the last entry (so that it will appear as the rightmost item on status bar).

Third, in the message map in mainfrm.h, add the following:

C++
afx_msg void OnUpdateTimeIndicator(CcmdUI *pCmdUI);

Fourth, in MainFrm.cpp, add the macro call:

C++
ON_UPDATE_COMMAND_UI ( ID_INDICATOR_TIME,OnUpdateTimeIndicator)

Fifth, in MainFrm.cpp, create the function body:

C++
void CMainFrame::OnUpdateTimeIndicator(CCmdUI *pCmdUI)
{
    CString strStatus;

    strStatus.Format(ID_INDICATOR_TIME, time);

    m_wndStatusBar.SetPaneText(
		m_wndStatusBar.CommandToIndex(ID_INDICATOR_TIME),
		strStatus );
}

Last of all, update the variable time every 60 seconds:

C++
#define TIME_STATUSBAR 1

class CMainFrame : public CFrameWnd
{
	……
private:
	char time[7];
	…..
}

void CMainFrame::OnCreate(LPCREATESTRUCT lpCreateStruct)
{
   ……
  SetTimer(TIME_STATUSBAR, 60000, NULL);
  Memset(time, ‘\0’, 7);
   ……
}

void CMainFrame::OnTimer(UINT nIDEvent) 
{
    // TODO: Add your message handler code here and/or call default
    if ( nIDEvent == TIME_STATUSBAR )
    {
        char tempchar[20];
        _strtime(tempchar); // get current time
        strncpy(time, tempchar, 5); // extract only hour and minute info
    }

    CFrameWnd::OnTimer(nIDEvent);
}

The secret here is, whenever variable time changes, the display changes during the next idle loop. This is done automatically by MFC. Isn’t it nice?

If you wish, you can download the sample project, which does the same as described above.

License

This article has no explicit license attached to it, but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt, please contact the author via the discussion board below.

A list of licenses authors might use can be found here.


Written By
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Comments and Discussions

 
Questionhow to change pane text when mouse move over diffrent controls? Pin
hvibh29-Nov-02 17:32
hvibh29-Nov-02 17:32 
GeneralCannot get time working on MDI :( Pin
3-Apr-02 16:23
suss3-Apr-02 16:23 
GeneralRe: Cannot get time working on MDI :( Pin
3-Apr-02 16:46
suss3-Apr-02 16:46 
Generalone pane Pin
23-Feb-02 8:29
suss23-Feb-02 8:29 
GeneralRe: one pane Pin
23-Feb-02 23:40
suss23-Feb-02 23:40 
GeneralRe: one pane Pin
24-Feb-02 0:11
suss24-Feb-02 0:11 
GeneralRe: one pane Pin
lucy25-Feb-02 8:02
lucy25-Feb-02 8:02 
Generalno topic Pin
Mazdak20-Feb-02 19:58
Mazdak20-Feb-02 19:58 
GeneralRe: no topic Pin
Nish Nishant20-Feb-02 20:27
sitebuilderNish Nishant20-Feb-02 20:27 
GeneralRe: no topic Pin
Kannan Kalyanaraman21-Feb-02 2:27
Kannan Kalyanaraman21-Feb-02 2:27 
Nish [BusterBoy] wrote:
Be easy on Lucy, Mazy.
It's her first article.


How about a 'first articles here' section in CP Wink | ;)

Cheers
Kannan
GeneralRe: no topic Pin
lucy21-Feb-02 2:52
lucy21-Feb-02 2:52 
GeneralRe: no topic Pin
Mazdak21-Feb-02 3:22
Mazdak21-Feb-02 3:22 
GeneralRe: no topic Pin
alex.barylski21-Feb-02 10:43
alex.barylski21-Feb-02 10:43 
GeneralYay, there is actually a female on this site !! Pin
20-Feb-02 19:01
suss20-Feb-02 19:01 
GeneralRe: Yay, there is actually a female on this site !! Pin
Christian Graus20-Feb-02 19:03
protectorChristian Graus20-Feb-02 19:03 
GeneralRe: Yay, there is actually a female on this site !! Pin
Nish Nishant20-Feb-02 19:14
sitebuilderNish Nishant20-Feb-02 19:14 
GeneralRe: Yay, there is actually a female on this site !! Pin
21-Feb-02 5:59
suss21-Feb-02 5:59 
GeneralRe: try message board Pin
lucy21-Feb-02 8:39
lucy21-Feb-02 8:39 
GeneralRe: Yay, there is actually a female on this site !! Pin
Mazdak21-Feb-02 9:00
Mazdak21-Feb-02 9:00 
GeneralRe: Yay, there is actually a female on this site !! Pin
lucy21-Feb-02 10:40
lucy21-Feb-02 10:40 
GeneralRe: Yay, there is actually a female on this site !! Pin
Mazdak21-Feb-02 19:12
Mazdak21-Feb-02 19:12 
GeneralRe: Yay, there is actually a female on this site !! Pin
Christian Graus25-Feb-02 8:45
protectorChristian Graus25-Feb-02 8:45 
GeneralRe: Yay, there is actually a female on this site !! Pin
Anonymous10-Oct-03 11:24
Anonymous10-Oct-03 11:24 
GeneralRe: Yay, there is actually a female on this site !! Pin
alex.barylski21-Feb-02 10:37
alex.barylski21-Feb-02 10:37 
GeneralRe: Yay, there is actually a female on this site !! Pin
25-Feb-02 8:31
suss25-Feb-02 8:31 

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