You can enhance an application's ease of use by using the frame status bar. The frame status bar is a read-only text field that contains user-specified text associated either with the frame, or with a specific field.

When the mouse cursor is placed over a field or a menu item, OpenROAD automatically displays the status bar text associated with the field or menu item in the status bar. If the field or menu item has no status text defined for it, OpenROAD places the status text of the first parent of the field or menu item that has status text defined for it. If no fields have status text, or if the mouse cursor is over the frame's form, OpenROAD automatically places the status text associated with the frame in the status bar.

The presence of the frame status bar and its associated informational text can be set in OpenROAD Workbench, or in the 4GL script of the frame. The following code is an example of how the status bar can be used when the mouse is over a particular field:

For more information about how to use the frame status bar, see the attributes of the FrameSource, FrameExec, FormField, and MenuField classes in the Language Reference Guide.