Windows and panes

The display layouts are hierarchically organized. The layouts are built using components called windows and panes.

Table 1. Windows and panes
Window / Pane

Description

Screen

The screen is the topmost display component, corresponding to the entire pixel area of the physical screen.

Window

A window is a component that has no parent except the screen. Typically, a window fills up the entire screen, but there are also smaller (temporary) windows that take up only a part of the screen, leaving other parts of the screen visible around themselves. Each application runs in a window of its own. Applications can also use other temporary windows.

Pane

A pane is a subcomponent of a window. A window may contain several panes, and each pane may contain further sub-panes and so on. A bottom level component that cannot have a sub-component can be called an element.

Application window
An application window is a main window filling up the entire screen. It is usually not used directly for display, but just as a parent for the various panes. A typical application window is divided into the following panes:

  • Status pane

  • Main pane

  • Control pane

See Main pane , Status pane and Control pane for more detailed descriptions on each of these panes.

Pop-up window

A pop-up window must not fill the entire screen; the pop-up window has a frame, and typically the underlying application is partly visible around the pop-up window. Pop-up windows are typically used in temporary states. Back stepping should not usually lead to a pop-up window. Detailed information on the various pop-up windows can be found in Pop-up windows.
Figure 1. Panes

Using windows and panes in applications

Windows and panes use the Symbian application and UI frameworks. For implementation information, see Application and UI framework implementation considerations.

Parent topic: UI components
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