3.1.1 Basics of appuifw Module

Figure 3.2 shows the layout of a S60 application UI in the normal screen mode and a summary of how it relates to the services available at the appuifw API. For alternative layouts, see Figure 3.3.

**Figure 3.2:** The different parts of the screen when using the 'normal' layout
$\includegraphics{screen-parts}$

**Figure 3.3:** UI layouts. left: 'normal', middle: 'large', right: 'full'
$\includegraphics[width=\screenwidth]{layout-normal}$ $\includegraphics[width=\screenwidth]{layout-large}$ $\includegraphics[width=\screenwidth]{layout-full}$

The main application window may be set up to be occupied by a UI control.

A multi-view application can show the different views as tabs in the navigation pane and react as the users navigate between tabs.

Dialogs always take precedence over the usual UI controls and appear on top of them.

UI controls are implemented as Python types. These types are available:

Text
Listbox
Canvas

UI controls appear on the screen as soon as an instance of the corresponding Python type is set to the body field (app.body) of the current application UI.

Form is a versatile dialog implemented as a type.

The Content_handler type facilitates interfacing to other UI applications and common high-level UI components. It is based on the notion that designated handlers can reduce UI application interaction to operations on MIME-type content.

The following dialogs are implemented as functions:

note
query
multi_query
selection_list
multi_selection_list
popup_menu

A dialog becomes visible as soon as the corresponding Python function has been called. The function returns with the eventual user input or information on the cancellation of the dialog. Form is an exception; it is shown when its execute method is called.

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