9.1 What Is an Action Bar & Pull Down Menu?
The action bar is the element at the top of the screen that consists of a list of choices representing a group of related actions that the users can request. A group of actions appear in a pull down list when users select an item on the action bar. Action bars control the user's dialogue with the application. ?
The action bar implementation within LANSA is at the process level.
A process, which is typically used as a menu in an SAA/CUA partition, can be made to act as an action bar instead.
This facility is controlled by the "Process Menu/Style" field that is specified when "Creating a new process".
Additionally it can be changed via the "Miscellaneous Process Details" facility.
A single line action bar process might appear like this:
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| File Edit Options Help |
|____________________________________________________________________|
| |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
If a user selected the first action bar choice (File), then a pull down might appear like this:
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| File Edit Options Help |
|____________________________________________________________________|
| |
| | 1. Open | |
| | 2. Close | |
| | 3. DTX to H/O | |
| | 4. FAX to H/O | |
| |_________________| |
| |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
An action bar can use from 2 to at most 4 lines across the top of the panel.
Each line can contain at most 6 action bar choices, thus totaling 18 choices within one process.
Each action bar choice has an associated pull down.
Each pull down can support at most 9 choices.
Thus 18 x 9 = 162 choices can be controlled from one action bar.
When a process is used as a normal menu, no extra details are required.
However, when a process is used as an "action bar", additional details about the layout and options in the action bar and its associated pull downs must be specified in a table called the "Action Bar Control Table".