As the frame applications provided by KDevelop contain a statusbar as well, it also offers a set of statusbar messages already for all menu and toolbar items. A statusbar help message is a short message that extends the meaning of a tool-tip or can be seen as a replacement for a tool-tip over menubar items and is (as the name suggests) displayed in the statusbar when the user enters a menu and highlights the menu entry; therefore all menu items connect their signal highlighted(int) to the method statusCallback(int) which selects the according message in a switch statement. Whenever you add a menuitem to already existing menus or a toolbar item, add an according entry in this method with a short description of the action the user will cause when activating the button or menuentry.
Example:
case ID_FILE_NEW: slotStatusHelpMsg(i18n("Creates a new document")); break; |
This will display a statusbar message by calling the method slotStatusHelpMsg() with the according translated help string whenever the user highlights a menu or toolbar item with the id ID_FILE_NEW that is connected to the statusCallback() method. Toolbars connect to this method by their signal pressed(int), which allows the user to press the toolbar button and move away the mouse when he doesn't want to invoke the command. KToolBar also offers the signal highlighted(int, bool) which can be used to display the message whenever the user highlights the button instead of the preset signal used.