Chapter 1

within a particular application. In UIQ, the menu bar usually contains two menus on the left
and may optionally have a folder menu on the right.
The application space is the central area of the screen, where an application's view is
displayed. Applications use this area in whichever way is appropriate to the information that
they display.
Optionally, an application displays a button bar at the bottom of the application space. The
most common use is to provide buttons to move between the application's various views. In
UIQ, a detail view, such as the one above that shows the detail of a single Agenda entry,
usually has a special button, in the lower right corner, to return you to the main view.
The status bar displays information such as battery charge, time of day, signal strength and
notification of incoming messages. The P800's status bar includes a keyboard icon in the
lower left corner that is used to display a virtual keyboard for text input if you do not wish to
use handwriting recognition.
Most of these screen layout elements can be recognized in other GUIs used with Symbian
OS, though they may differ significantly in appearance, or be located in different areas of the
screen.
Menus
Have a look at the menu in the emulator's application launcher or, as illustrated in Figure
1.3, in the Agenda application. Again, the menu bar is different (but not too different) from
menu bars in desktop GUIs.
Figure 1.3
Cascaded menu items can be used both to hide less common options, and to reduce the
vertical space required by menu panes. This feature is used sparingly in UIQ applications, in
which menu content changes with context and each menu is designed to contain as small