Control pane
The control pane occupies the bottom part of the screen and displays the labels associated with the softkeys.
Figure: Control pane
Note: In landscape orientation, a part of the status pane (the clock and indicator pane) is inside the control pane.
Normal touch down and release functionality applies to the softkeys in control pane. Activation is performed on touch release. However, activation can be cancelled by dragging the touch from the softkey area and performing a touch release.
The actual physical softkeys should be positioned directly beneath the screen so that the association between the keys and their respective labels is evident. Note, however, that the middle label refers to the Selection key.
Using the control pane in applications
The APIs to use for the control pane are the Buttons API for the softkeys and the Options menu API for the menus.
For implementation information on using the softkeys, see Using the Buttons API. For implementation information on the menus, see Using the Options menu API.
The Symbian platform uses MENU_BAR resources to create the Options menu, when a mobile device user selects the Options softkey. The options that appear above the softkeys are determined by CBA resources. The MENU_BAR resources map the text that appears in the Options menu with commands that are collected by the event loop of the application framework and delivered to your application for command handling.